UNTIL this week I was an Isla Fisher-aholic, but I’m getting better thanks to “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” a “Devil Wears Prada” for Chico’s customers. Lightning-strike victims, coma-ward residents and US magazine readers, here is a movie for you.
Fisher plays Rebecca, a journalist who, swathed in pink and orange and fur and animal prints (I’d like to see the labels – “Carrie Bradshaw Presents the Zsa Zsa Collection by Miss Piggy”?), is stunned to find herself with a $900 credit card bill. Nine hundred bucks? How much for the other shoe?
She gets help buying an expensive scarf from a passerby (Hugh Dancy – think of him as the successor to Hugh Grant, the way you think of Shia LaBeouf as the new Marlon Brando). He turns out to be the boss who is interviewing her for a job at a magazine that, despite its service-y title (“Successful Saving”), thirsts for hard-hitting investigative pieces.
Yet the editor makes Rebecca, a financial illiterate who conflates fiscal crisis with “fish crisis,” a star by publishing her cute personal essay called “The Girl in the Green Scarf.” Note to would-be financial journalists: No one cares about your personal musings. Not even at Portfolio.
Rebecca got the gig by chance while seeking work on an awestruck journey to the glamour mecca at . . . 300 W. 57th St. Can anyone ever have been this excited to work at Hearst?
Despite the use of Hearst HQ, the fictional magazine firm revels in such Condé Nastrology as the co-founder’s name being “Si” and snobby Euro-editors such as “Alette” (Kristin Scott Thomas), the French queenpin of the fashion book. Confronted with ugly frocks, she tells them to “Dégage.”
Fisher looks adorable but otherwise wastes the considerable talents she showed in “Wedding Crashers.” If there’s a wall or a waiter, her orders are to crash into it. (Director P.J. Hogan, who hasn’t had a hit since his two ’90s wedding albums – “Muriel’s” and “My Best Friend’s” – is frantically trying to stay employed by shedding IQ points, which is probably wise.)
Rebecca deploys a noisy electric pencil sharpener during an important meeting (who even has one of those anymore?) and crawls across a conference table amid a roomful of execs. One magazine chieftain tells another that “the key” to success is “advertising revenue,” which is a bit like the quarterback telling the wide receiver that the key to victory is scoring more points than the other team.
Rebecca gets taken shopping at Barneys by the editrix (happens to every rookie magazine writer), who then stops by the home of Rebecca’s New Jerseyish parents, where refresh ments are by Bundt and décor by Hummel, to beg Rebecca to work for her.
To cure her addiction, Re becca stores her credit card in a block of ice in the freezer so we can get a cute scene in which she chips away at the ice with a stiletto and melts it with a hair dryer. Hey, screenwriters: Dégage.
Rebecca has some hard lessons to learn about thrift and frivolity that the movie allows her to absorb as she scores her favorite cute item and a rich guy. She’s already $16K in the hole when she tells herself that the $120 green scarf would be “an investment.”
Silly girl. Wasteful impulse buying is not an “investment” – it’s a “job-creating stimulus.” Get ready for the sequel: “Shopaholic Secretary – of the Treasury.”
CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC
The Devil’s Worth Nada.
Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG (mild crude language). At the E-Walk, the Lincoln Square, the Kips Bay, others.