Confessions of a Shopaholic: Worth Your Gucci?
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Confessions of a Shopaholic is brilliant author Madeleine Wickham's — more popularly known as Sophie Kinsella — hilarious, chic novel. It centers on Rebecca Bloomwood, a financial journalist whose finances are out of control, but whose addiction — shopping — ultimately leads her to millionaire Luke Brandon whom she’ll eventually fall in love with. And this basically is all the movie has in common with the book.
Out of all the films I’ve seen that are adaptations of famous novels, Confessions of a Shopaholic tops at taking liberties. The movie makes such a big thing about her being an accidental comedic journalist, sometimes more so than her being a shopaholic, which isn’t the central theme of the book. It’s set in New York, and the characters, with the exception of Luke Brandon, are all Americans instead of the British we all came to love in Sophie’s books. As always, the book is way better than the film. There are so many deviations from the real plot that the movie seems like a separate story all together and just happens to have characters with the same name as those in the book.
But it's not all bad; the film has its moments, and Isla Fisher plays Rebecca Bloomwood the way you would picture her in your mind if she were American. She makes the movie fun and brings just enough cuteness, kind of like Amy Adams in Enchanted. And Hugh Dancy, who plays Luke Brandon, is cute and loveable and can be Luke Brandon except he’s not as gorgeous and sharp and sexy as the book says him to be. Still, he’s acceptable and convincing.
But it's not all bad; the film has its moments, and Isla Fisher plays Rebecca Bloomwood the way you would picture her in your mind if she were American. She makes the movie fun and brings just enough cuteness, kind of like Amy Adams in Enchanted. And Hugh Dancy, who plays Luke Brandon, is cute and loveable and can be Luke Brandon except he’s not as gorgeous and sharp and sexy as the book says him to be. Still, he’s acceptable and convincing.
The film is simple and shallow, and funny in its simplicity and silly in its shallowness. It’s not something you’d watch again and again, but it’s something you’d watch if you just want brainless romcom to destress. It’s your everyday chick flick, that’s what it is.
I’m not hard to please, and I’ve enjoyed movies that hardcore critics over at Rotten
Tomatoes have all but booed (The Women, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, what-have-you). I don’t look at the itty-bitty details that should supposedly “make a movie.” I don’t criticize the lighting, the script, the director to an inch of their lives. I’m your ordinary movie-goer, but that’s what makes my take on the movie — dare I say significant? — different. Most viewers are just like me, so I say, try it, watch the movie.Confessions of a Shopaholic is a film not meant to be taken seriously. It’s just something to pass time, something to make you laugh, and it does make you laugh (everyone in the movie house was laughing, including me). It is very far from the book, so if you want to enjoy it, don’t compare it. Take it as something totally separate from the novel.
The final verdict? It’s not worth your Gucci, but it’s worth your fake Fendi, and with the financial crisis afoot, that’s not such a bad deal.
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Fake Fendi – Sex and the City
Paola @ 7:22 PM
