Friday, March 13, 2009

I Confess I Saw This Movie

"Confessions of a Shopaholic" is a tidy little sermon about how addicts lie, cheat, and make themselves and the people around them miserable. Since at the end of the first 20 minutes you know the moral of the story and also pretty much exactly how it's going to turn out, you hope for creative vignettes buried in the movie, winning lines, and good music, such as a lazy cover of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" by Greg Laswell.

While Isla Fisher does a fine job as Rebecca Bloomwood, an ambitious journalist who wants to work for a "Vogue"-like magazine but gets tripped up by $16,000 in credit card debt, John Goodman and Joan Cusack are especially endearing as her parents. "All that defines me," Goodman tells his daughter when offering to sell his beloved motor home to pay her debt, "is you and your mother." There's also a great scene where mom and dad play host to the fashion magazine's Coco Chanel-like editor (Kristen Scott Thomas) in their modest home and try to cut her the world's smallest piece of cake. "Smaller!" she barks. If the movie had been any smaller, it wouldn't have been there, but it was good for a Friday night date with Kathy.

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