I'm back from the
Balkans and ready to blog again! This week's movie is
Confessions of a Shopaholic, based on the
novel by
Sophie Kinsella. It's pretty typical chick-lit, making a predictable chick flick. Our leading actress,
Isla Fisher, is a great physical actress - while some of the gags are just obnoxious, many are rather endearing, and a good distraction from the shallow, materialistic, addictive behavior of Rebecca Bloomwood. Her lack of professionalism, from lying in her interview to blowing off work for a sample sale, is truly atrocious, and seriously unrealistic. What's more, she gets a boyfriend out of all this nonsense - it wouldn't be a chick flick without some sort of romance story arc. Rebecca does encounter some inner conflicts surrounding her compulsive shopping and the problems that causes outside of her credit card debt, and eventually overcomes that addiction, repairing her friendship with Suze and getting an offer from Alette, the fashion magazine she initially wanted to write for. The release of this movie was untimely, in the midst of the financial crisis. And while there are some relevant lessons on personal finance, the way Rebecca and the other characters consume luxury goods would have been much more appropriate and almost prescient if it had been released sooner.
