Confessions of a Shopaholic: Movie Review (2009)

Directed by P.J. Hogan, written by Tracey Jackson, Tim Firth and Kayla Albert, 100 minutes, rated PG.

“Confessions of a Shopaholic” is the sort of movie that would either make Suze Orman combust or send her into shock. After the film, you can just see poor Orman lying there, flat on her back in the middle of the aisle, stuttering the word “denied” until someone took her away.

For the rest of us, the film should at least cause a moment’s pause, particularly since it arrives in the wake of so many bailouts and buyouts, a stimulus plan, collapsing markets, foreclosures, job losses and bankruptcies.

Here is a movie about a young woman so reckless when it comes to maxing out her credit cards in an effort to help out her best friend--that would be her closet--that the idea of pitying her when she lands into financial trouble might prove difficult for some to do.

At least on paper.

The good news is that the woman in question, Rebecca Bloom wood, is played by Isla Fisher, who is so winning in the role, she’s pretty much impossible not to like in spite of her character being such a slight, financial screw-up.

Looking weirdly like Amy Adams (click the photo to supersize--Fisher is on the right), Fisher is, in fact, the best part of a movie that’s otherwise a mixed bag of elements you either want to exchange or keep. The film’s best scenes are revealed in its trailer--always a downer--and while other moments do score a few laughs, there aren’t enough of them for the movie to be anything more than a slightly above-average comedy.

In the film, life turns sour for Rebecca when the gardening magazine at which she works suddenly folds. Struck dumb by the amount of money she owes to various creditors, this Manhattan-based fashionista is pressed into action and hustles to find a job. Her hope is to land a position at Allette, a magazine not unlike Vogue, but when circumstances conspire against her, she decides to lie about her past in an interview with the editor of a financial magazine and snags a job as one of its columnists. The irony!

Naturally, her new editor (Hugh Dancy) is young, single and good looking. Predictably, a budding relationship blooms between them. Unfortunately, in an effort to retain his interest in her, Rebecca feels she must to lie about every corner of her unraveling life to be worthy of him. With bold, brassy strokes, she colors her world not in the red ink it deserves, but in the brightness of stability and financial responsibility, two qualities Rebecca lacks.

Will it all catch up with her? Holy Manolo, what do you think?

Based on Sophie Kinsella’s best selling novel, the film is so sandbagged by rote rhythms, it steals away much of the spontaneity Fisher brings to her performance. And it’s a good performance, one deserving of a better movie that took chances, ditched the cliches, and came through with all the freshness Fisher emotes.

Grade: C+

Check out the trailer below: