In a country like Singapore where the national pastime is shopping, this chick flick will find no lack of an audience.
Adapted from the Shopaholic series of novels by Sophie Kinsella, it stars a surprisingly lovable Isla Fisher as an plastic-wielding, incurable shopping addict Rebecca Bloomwood, for whom it’s “a basic human right” to be clad in $200 Marc Jacobs underwear.
Rebecca is a journalist who aspires badly to works at Alette, a high-fashion magazine not unlike Vogue. Through an error however, she receives a job offer at Successful Savings, a financial magazine where the monetary insight she is expected to pen is as dry as the state of her bank account.
With her escalating bills aggravated by a sudden retrenchment, she takes the job, and begins an ironic career of dishing out advice about money smarts. Using an unconventional, refreshingly jargon-free way of relating to her readers, her column becomes an unexpected hit with the everyman, or in this case, the every woman.
She becomes the toast of the town overnight and garners the increasing adoration of her editor Luke Brandon (Hugh Dancy) but as her own sordid financial affairs start to catch up with her, she is forced to make some very painful decisions.
As with most chick flicks, the plot here is unapologetically simplified, and if you’re looking for an exposition into the perils of a credit-dependent lifestyle (as though what’s in the newspapers nowadays isn’t enough) or the evils of consumerism, you won’t find it here. But what gives this joyride some weight is the comedic honesty with which it portrays the psyche of a spendthrift — through some hilarious Shopaholics Anonymous sessions and talking mannequins.
Other than that, the laughs are generated mainly from visual and slapstick gags, none of which are very original or creative — do we really need to guffaw at another head-on collision with the poor waiter carrying a tray full of food? But it’s thanks to Fisher’s charm and knack for comic timing that Confessions turns out to be a better-than-expected piece of escapism… if only to keep you from swiping that piece of plastic for a whole, umm, 100 minutes.
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