Where did Isla Fisher find so much shopahol?
Director: P.J. Hogan
Notable Cast: Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, Krysten Ritter, Joan Cusack, John Goodman, John Lithgow, Kristin Scott Thomas, Fred Armisen, Leslie Bibb
I may not speak Prada, but I most certainly speak Addiction. Enough so that I can identify with that which rings true in Confessions of a Shopaholic and be thoroughly bothered by all the trappings that make it just another crappy movie.
Anyone who has dealt with addiction up close knows that it is nothing to joke about and while some might defend Confessions of a Shopaholic as a light-hearted comedy, the fact is that much of the dramatic heavy handedness remains. Isla Fisher proves capable of balancing both and making her character seem realistic, but sadly the script won’t allow for her to make the film something more.
Fisher’s Rebecca Bloomwood is a definitive Carrie Bradshaw wannabe, she has the fashion style and sense but she hasn’t got the cash. Rebecca’s position in life seems like a common one for women raised with consumerist tendencies. Finally a movie shows the darker side of being young and beautiful as Rebecca accrues a significant amount of debt as she spends more than she earns writing for a gardening magazine.
Her big plan to get out of debt is to write for top fashion source Alette Magazine. But when a drunken night with a friend goes awry she conveniently winds up working for sister publication Successful Savings. This particular aspect of the movie should infuriate any aspiring writer as well as those who hate simplistic storytelling. See it is supposed to be funny that a known shopaholic is now working for a magazine centering around fiscal responsibility.
This humorous concept is played to the hilt for the rest of the movie as Rebecca shirks her written duties to shop, insinuates that her debt collector is a former boyfriend who is stalking her, and tries to hide the fact that she never meant to write for the magazine in the first place. Naturally, Successful Savings editor Luke Brandon (Hugh Dancy) falls for Rebecca and the feels betrayed later on but kisses her in the end in a tidy little story arc that is supposed to add the romance to the romantic comedy that is Confessions of a Shopaholic.
However, at the core lies the tragic tale of a woman who does not know how to handle her demons, hurts everyone close to her, and generally makes life hard for herself. In other words, Rebecca is an addict, no secret there. Much of her behavior is intended to be funny: skipping work to shop, dodging the cinematically over-aggressive debt collector, and reconverting a support group back into a bunch of shopaholics. If viewers consider these things for more than a second these topics become quite sad and distract from the awful comedy in which they are encased.
The whole affair is an ill-advised exercise in futility. Confessions of a Shopaholic is neither funny enough to make the audience forget how helpless compulsion can make a person feel, nor is it powerful enough to be taken seriously as a meditation on the topic of addiction.
FINAL RATING (ON A SCALE OF 1-5 BUCKETS):
