Search - Confessions of a Shopaholic [Blu-ray] on Blu-ray

Not much confessing going on here...

Andrew Ellington | I'm kind of everywhere | 09/13/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I love me some Isla Fisher. She is like a spunky and less talented yet somewhat better looking Amy Adams and I just adore her for all of that. Her comedic timing is pretty impeccable and she always brings a gigantic smile to my face, despite the fact that she stars in a lot of mediocre and formulaic comedies. `Confessions of a Shopaholic' isn't really any different to tell you the truth. It is fun and at times funny and it has a certain layer of charm, but overall the film is dreadfully predictable and very generic.

Thankfully, Fisher is hilariously endearing.

The film revolves around a girl named Rebecca who has a severe shopping problem. Apparently the world is a bad place unless she is spending a ton of money on things she doesn't need. This is rather odd since she has a loving family and a crazy awesome best friend and she is doing what she loves. Anyways, in an attempt to get a job working for a prestigious fashion magazine she winds up getting a job at one of their sister magazines which focuses on finance, something she has no clue about. Her charm and `every woman' perspective though, not only get her hired but get her a lot of attention and accolades.

The girl in the green scarf is a hit.

Her past eventually catches up with her and life bites her in the butt, but you can be pretty confident that she'll land on her feet.

There just isn't much going on here. That is sad, since the current run of movies in this genre is starting to look overwhelmingly sub-par. It is like everyone in Hollywood has suddenly gone lazy. These films don't need to have a point and they don't need to offer us anything different anymore. They just have to place pretty people in familiar situations (preposterous, yet somehow familiar). In other words; these film don't need to make sense anymore, and that bothers me.

High Dancy is kind of lifeless, but attractive so he works as a prop for Fisher to gush over. Krysten Ritter is frantic and insanely charismatic. It works half of the time. John Goodman and Joan Cusack are clichés through and through, but they are veteran character actors who know how to do what they do very well, and it shows. Leslie Bibb looks awful here, and I genuinely think that she is the definition of beautiful...but what happened to her cheekbones? Kristen Scott Thomas has a thankless yet subtly hilarious cameo, and John Lithgow really deserved a bigger role (who doesn't just LOVE him). In the end, the only think that makes this uninspired rom-com work is Isla Fisher's dedicated adorableness.

If you have nothing better to do, this is not a bad way to go."