In Defense Of Consumer
Spending- With The Film Adaptation Of Sophie Kinsella’s “Confessions Of A Shopaholic”
(2009)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Seth Garth
Confessions Of A
Shopaholic, starring Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, from the novels of Sophie
Kinsella, 2009
I can’t believe that I
have been given an assignment dealing with the addiction of shopping, girl’s
stuff, Confessions Of A Shopaholic starring
Isla Fisher as Rebecca, a girl’s film that should by right be done by somebody
who knows something about the subject, about shopping. For myself I am like the
guy, like Luke the money magazine editor, played by Hugh Dancy have set world
records for shopping and getting the hell out-fast. But this is the genesis of
how I got this turkey, turkey for me not for the people who might get a few
chuckles out of the film or could relate to this shopping mania. Greg Green,
the new site manager who has very different ideas about the way forward for
this site, has been looking, has been foundering as far as I am concerned
trying to grab a larger, younger audience and has been running a streak of
so-called super-hero bang-bang films and now has branched out to this kind of
odd-ball comedy to grab the shopping consuming crowd which peaks on Black
Friday after Thanksgiving Day I guess. He had originally approached Leslie
Dumont but she balked having written two consecutive women-related film review
and had expressed in print that she did not want to be tagged as the token “women’s
page” writer. Rebuffed then Greg approached me under the principle of
“broadening my horizons” and having avoided those super-hero films could not
back off. So here we are.
Here we are beyond the
obvious boy meets girl theme which I will address later that Hollywood has been
hatching and working for its entire existence. Rebecca is a shopaholic who also
happens to be a journalist working for a low-rent gardening magazine who has
dreams of working for the bigs, for a high end fashion magazine on her career
rise. By hook or by crook she gets a job working for the aforementioned Luke in
a smart money magazine owned by the same parent company who owned the fashion
magazine. That will start the long haul attraction which will lead to their
love affair by film’s end.
Along the way it turns
out that the perky, vivacious Rebecca has not only a shopping jones, is
purebred junkie, which is probably more common than expected but had been eaten
up her credit cards. Proved that her eyes were bigger than her pocketbook.
Something had to be done if she was to keep afloat, grab that high end job and
grab that poor little rich boy (his parents were super-rich but he wanted to
pull himself up by his own bootstraps ) while dodging the repo men, the debt
dead beat pursuers. The bulk of the film, including a bout with Shopaholic
Anonymous, at first as a lark then more seriously, involves her getting out from
under without dear Luke getting wind of the idea. That was not be and the
couple went through a period of deep freeze once he found out she was in debt
up to her ass. Naturally that freeze would only last for a bit until she got
out of hock. Got back to the real world, a world without going crazy over
consumer goods. Beyond that the storyline could not carry any additional weight.
Greg I have done my duty.
