Confessions of a Shopaholic: Critic Reviews

From its talking storewindow mannequins to its sneaky debauched heroine, the movie is romantic-comedy fizz, but it's fizz that bubbles like champagne.

Like the flailing American economy, Confessions of a Shopaholic wants to eat its cake and have its spiritual redemption too. (Talk about timing!)

It's by-the-numbers stuff, but all so silly and goofy you can't take offence.

Not only is it an unfunny movie shrilly told, it probably is the most ill-timed and appallingly insulting movie in recent memory.

Rebecca is the Lucy Ricardo of profligate spending.

Fantasy here usually comes at reality's expense.

Confessions of a Shopaholic plays like both a supremely outmoded chick-lit adaptation and an outrageously obscene gesture as the economy continues to swallow up livelihoods, homes, and hope.

Here we are, only nine months after the Sex and the City movie, and an obsessive spender with an overstuffed closet -and credit card bills to match- no longer seems quite so cute.

The production renders totally irrelevant all hopes for a well-made movie. It's one of those ragged, pandemonious studio comedies that hammers at plot points in every contrived scene.

Too bad. It could have been more, and its audience deserves better.

It was hard to shake the worry that a fizzy comedy about debt would be about as wrong for our current woes as uncorking a bottle of champagne. Confessions is definitely slight.

If the movie didn't pander so madly to the audience for Sex and the City and Legally Blonde, it might have been a comedy touchstone instead of a cringeworthy footnote.

The plotting is on automatic pilot. It needs Chesley B. Sullenberger III.

If there is a single bright spot in the financial crisis, it is the possibility that one day producer Jerry Bruckheimer will run out of money.

Put this one back on the shelf, and walk away.

I didn't much like Shopaholic, but, boy, did Fisher make me laugh.

Had Confessions been truer to its chick-lit novel inspiration, the movie could have been fizzily enjoyable instead of sickening.

There is so much wrong with Confessions of a Shopaholic -- timing, execution, resolution and moral stance, to name a few -- that it's hard to know where to begin.

Part shopping fantasy, part cautionary debt tale and all chick flick, Confessions of a Shopaholic is like Sex and the City with a lower IQ.

I can't really recommend this movie in these perilous times, except for viewers in search of a nostalgic chuckle or two.

Strains far too hard for comedy that seldom erupts with full force and inevitably betrays a free-spending mindset that now feels gone with the wind.

Note to would-be financial journalists: No one cares about your personal musings. Not even at Portfolio.

A dizzy and chic chick picture for our times, this hit-or-miss comedy is about the perils of conspicuous consumption, the void that shopping fills in some souls.

It's very hard to watch a wild-eyed woman engage in an orgy of avarice using a fan of maxed-out cards when so many have lost so much - even if there is a message within the madness, that fiscal responsibility is the true key to happiness.

I did not know that mannequins in Manhattan store windows could actually talk. I did not find their performance in the least wooden.