Based on Sophie Kinsella’s monstrously successful chick-lit novel, (released here as The Secret Dreamworld Of A Shopaholic) Confessions adds heart and good-humoured conscience to the shopping porn milieu. Imagine Sex and the City with a glimmer of humanity and an ounce of wit, retooled for post-recession sensibilities and populated by a cast of real live humans.
Let’s not get carried away here. Confessions… is plenty generic and awfully familiar. Isla Fisher does the honours as the titular ditzy heroine, a well-intentioned spendthrift with a mountain of credit card bills who accidentally lands a advice column on personal finance. Can she stay away from Manhattan’s glittering clothing emporiums long enough to evade the debt collector and land her dishy boss (Hugh Dancy)? Have a guess.
It might well have been assembled from last season’s remnants though it’s a pretty enough frock. In the wake of Bride Wars, the shoddiest rom-com was always going to seem like Andrei Rublev, but there are things to shout about here. Who couldn’t love Joan Cusack and John Goodman as the heroine’s penny-pinching parents? Or Breaking Bad’s Krysten Ritter as the bohemian best friend?
We must also consider the Isla Fisher rule, a cinematic constant that states “Isla Fisher is the best thing in any movie that is lucky enough to get her.” A brilliant performer, Ms. Fisher makes for lovely sparky company. Her comedy instincts are sharp and, we think, surely equal to those of her domestic partner, Mr. Sacha Baron Cohen.
Somebody hand that woman a kick arse script and watch her go.