In theaters
CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC, directed by P.J. Hogan, written by Tracey Jackson, Tim Firth and Kayla Albert, 100 minutes, rated PG.
“Confessions of a Shopaholic” is the sort of movie that would make financial adviser Suze Orman either combust or send her into shock. After the film, you can just see poor Orman lying there, flat on her back in the middle of the aisle, stuttering the word “denied” until someone took her away.
For the rest of us, the film should at least cause a moment’s pause, particularly since it arrives in the wake of so many bailouts and buyouts, a stimulus plan, collapsing markets, foreclosures, job losses and bankruptcies.
Here is a movie about a young woman so reckless when it comes to maxing out her credit cards in an effort to help out her best friend — that would be her closet — that the idea of pitying her when she lands in financial trouble might prove difficult for some to do.
At least on paper.
The good news is that the woman in question, Rebecca Bloomwood, is played by Isla Fisher, who is so winning in the role, she’s pretty much impossible not to like in spite of her character being such a financial screw-up.
Looking weirdly like Amy Adams, Fisher is, in fact, the best part of a movie that’s otherwise a mixed bag of elements you either want to exchange or keep. The film’s best scenes are revealed in its trailer — always a downer — and while other moments do score a few laughs, there aren’t enough of them for the movie to be anything more than a slightly above-average comedy.
In the film, life turns sour for Rebecca when the gardening magazine at which she works suddenly folds. Struck dumb by the amount of money she owes to creditors, this Manhattan-based fashionista is pressed into action and hustles to find a job. Her hope is to land a position at Allette, a magazine not unlike Vogue, but when circumstances conspire against her, she decides to lie about her past in an interview with the editor of a financial magazine and snags a job as one of its columnists. The irony!
Naturally, her new editor (Hugh Dancy) is young, single and good-looking. Predictably, a budding relationship blooms between them. Unfortunately, in an effort to retain his interest in her, Rebecca feels she must lie about every corner of her unraveling life to be worthy of him. With bold, brassy strokes, she colors her world not in the red ink it deserves, but in the brightness of stability and financial responsibility, two qualities Rebecca lacks.
Will it all catch up with her? Holy Manolo, what do you think?
Based on Sophie Kinsella’s best-selling novel, the film is so sandbagged by rote rhythms, it steals away much of the spontaneity Fisher brings to her performance. And it’s a good performance, one deserving of a better movie that took chances, ditched the cliches, and came through with all the freshness Fisher emotes.
Grade: C+
On DVD and Blu-ray disc
CHANGELING, directed by Clint Eastwood, written by J. Michael Straczynski, 140 minutes, rated R.
Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” galvanizes Eastwood’s presence as one of today’s best working directors.
Set in a masterfully re-created 1920s Los Angeles, “Changeling” is the story of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single mother whose 9-year-old son, Walter (Gattlin Griffith), goes missing. Five grueling months pass before the corrupt Los Angeles Police Department, desperate for good press, finally produces a child that Christine claims is not hers. The LAPD decides to ignore that claim and insists that this boy is hers.
What’s going on here? To say the least, it’s complicated, but when Christine tries to find out by questioning the police with the help of a powerful Presbyterian minister named Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), she quickly is gathered up and sent to an asylum. Then the horror really begins with the introduction of Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner), a serial killer linked to the deaths of 20 children.
What springs from all this is a beautifully measured movie armed with the undercurrent of a thriller whose nuanced performances help to tell it well.
The cast members all raise their game here — Jolie is especially good, commanding our attention, earning it, and scoring an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in the process. As the detective who cracks the Northcott case, Michael Kelly is superb. And while it’s true that J. Michael Straczynski’s script can be heavy-handed in the flashbacks concerning Northcott, whose real-life story is altered here, the film mostly tempers its melodramatic elements by not giving itself over fully to them.
One of the film’s chief conceits comes down to its ambitious scope — it’s enormous. Still, Eastwood is fearless, juxtaposing a mother’s profound worry for her child and the injustices threatening to cripple her attempts to find him against a city undone by the very people charged to protect it. That’s a lot for one movie to contain, but Eastwood succeeds. He taps into Christine’s rage, he uses it, and he drives us through.
Grade: A-
WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, DVD giveaways and archive of movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.