"Confessions of a Shopaholic" (2009) - Movie Review

“Confessions of a Shopaholic” does one thing right and that is to clearly show how an shopping addicted person would be and we come to dislike her. And they do it even towards the adorable Isla Fisher, here she is under the clothes of spoiled young woman named Rebecca Bloomwood. She lies without a care to a debt collector from the credit card company, Derek Smeath (Robert Stanton) and he fights till he can to bring her down good and clear. P.J. Hoogan directed film is two hour of seeing one of the most irresponsible person over the screen and the worst of it is wants us to laugh about it.

Rebecca is a young journalist in New York with a financially frugal parents from whom she learned the opposite in spending. She goes wild in shopping unnecessarily and does it good. I have always wondered at this concept of shopping. I would not deny that there is a warmth of a great feeling to own something but I also know bloody well that it is pure feeling of control and very temporary in its posing of happiness. But is that something of an addiction for many people to go bonkers about it? May be it is but does it also invite a sense of irresponsibility? Looks like it. I shop DVDs a lot but under very rare circumstances I go beyond spending 10$ per piece. Will I be buying DVDs while being hunted by debt collectors? Nope and I feel insulted to ask me that question.

And if any of you think that it is a craze women possess, you are completely wrong. I have seen guys whose face glee with happiness and glow like seeing angels pouring sunshine especially for them. There was an order in spending when the currency existed as paper and did not become plastic. Sadly that card has got most of us in the current economic mess in the form of credit. The film while unabashedly lives through Rebecca Bloomwood and her obsession for shopping, it after making her a pester and a liar in the end wants sympathy. That annoyed me or even kind of made me feel of making fun of my sense of judgment. The solution they arrive for her problem is to sell all her clothes and make further budding addicts to that world of uncontrollable spending. And to top it off she gets her revenge on the debt collector who understandably goes nuts over her TV show after he has tried every possible avenue to get her attention to pay her bills.

I have seen couple of films of Isla Fisher and have been impressed with her performance. Even in a supporting miniscule role in “Wedding Crashers”, she was ecstatic as the obsessive and rough lover to the man who just wanted to sleep with her. Then she perfectly embraced a little matured but still colourful woman in “Definitely, Maybe”. Those two instances said that she could have been what Amy Adams is doing right now. She is full of energy and can tone down when necessary. And she can single handedly make a mark on you. Here she does that in a fallen story of ridicule and an abuse of the medium.

There is of course a better character than Rebecca in this film which would be her love interest. An English man trying to make a name for himself is Luke Brandon (Hugh Dancy). He strikes off Rebecca’s name for a job after an abysmal interview. But in a drunken night in figuring her credit bills with a very devoted friend Suze (Krysten Ritter), Rebecca wrongfully mails the original aspiring letter for her dream job to Brandon’s magazine, “Successful Savings” ironically.

As I painfully finished watching the film, I was wondering whether I am being an hypocrite in not truthfully acknowledging the tendency to shop in every one while naming it as a materialistic and superficial statement taking a high stan. For that matter any kind of activity focussing on the levels of addiction has a chance with every one but we do not act upon it. Of course they are talking extremities but is there a film about alcoholism which actually glorifies it and then says, “Hey, It is bad”?

More than badly made, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” sugars up its concept fluttering its exciting wings towards the glass doors on the shops. Rebecca will of course learn her lesson and they put a moral conscience ending to it but not in the manner of conviction. The redemption she does only encourages further crazed shoppers to take a dip in this vanity fair. This is a film which migrates beyond its awful nature and stomps on the value it advocates. I guess I am more upset because of its hypocrisy.