Confessions Of A Shopaholic

Director: PJ Hogan
Screenwriters: Tracey Jackson, Tim Firth
Starring: Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, John Goodman
Running Time: 100 mins
Certificate: PG

This excruciatingly bad attempt at a breezy romcom is an ill-conceived, dreadfully executed mess. Totally bereft of laughs, drama and chemistry between the leads, the movie is so nausea-inducing that it belongs in a sub genre of its own - the vomcom. Sick bags at the ready...

Isla Fisher, trying to make the jump to leading lady as the titular shopaholic, was supplied with more engaging scripts back in her days on Home And Away. She plays Rebecca, a wannabe journalist who simply can't resist the materialistic lure of shopping and snaps up garment after garment with money she doesn't have. Before long, she's being chased by a debt collector while trying to hold down a writing job with financial magazine boss Luke (Hugh Dancy), a man seemingly cloned from Colin Firth in the Bridget Jones movies.

The fundamental flaw of Confessions Of A Shopaholic is that it expects the viewer to find Rebecca endearing, but instead she comes across as a selfish, stupid fool who deserves to suffer. She totally stiffs her flatmate for rent, tells Luke some scandalous lies to borrow money and continues to spend, spend, spend while telling the debt collection agency she is seriously ill or abroad.

Fisher tries desperately to play it all cute and ditsy, wrinkling her nose and deploying her smile and puppy dog eyes at every opportunity. The intrusive soundtrack tries to hammer home that she's a fun lass, while some dire slapstick attempts, such as continually slipping over on her heels, tries to make her seem innocent and misguided. To make matters worse, the debt collector on her trail is depicted as the cartoonish bad guy with greasy side parting, trenchcoat and thick-rimmed specs. We're supposed to boo and hiss whenever he enters the fray, but instead you want Rebecca to be collared and humiliated for being such a duplicitous cow.

Similarly, the blossoming romance between Luke and Rebecca is there to provide feelgood moments and intrigue, but it falls flat as there's zero chemistry between Fisher and Dancy. Besides, why should Rebecca get the dashing young man? After all, their first meeting in a queue for hot dogs involved her extorting money out of him to pay for a present for a dying relative when in reality it was to buy herself a green scarf. That might not prove fatal had there been some convincing transition in her character throughout the movie, yet she is still a nasty piece of work by the end - as proven by the method in which she finally pays back the debt collector.

Speaking of payments, let's hope the talented likes of John Lithgow, John Goodman and Kristin Scott-Thomas were handsomely rewarded for their parts in this cinematic atrocity. All three play simplistic stock characters that aren't worth mentioning, such is the substandard quality of the writing.

Confessions Of A Shopaholic appears to have been assembled from a shopping list of every possible element required to make a bad movie. Retail therapy? There's every chance you'll be craving a real therapist after sitting through this travesty.


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