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Let’s Talk About Movies: Why “Confessions of a Shopaholic” is a Fantastic Dramatic Comedy

by: C.E.Parker

Movie: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Rating: PG

Release Date: February 13th, 2009

Genre Listed on Popular Platforms: Romantic Comedy, Family

My Argued Genre(s): Comedy, Drama, Romance(Sub-Genre)

Film Duration: 1hr 44mins

Word Count(For My Review): 2,727

Yes, you read that title right. A Dramatic Comedy - also less popularly known as a “Dramedy”.

Also, warning: Spoilers are ahead.

For my first official movie review, I’m going to talk about the 2009 film “Confessions of a Shopaholic”. However, let me tell you a bit about me before jumping into the actual review.

First off, I’m writing an informal essay because there should never be a formal review of anything. This is just me, getting real with you, and telling you my thoughts and opinions of things. You can agree with me, or you can feel the exact opposite. In fact, if you feel differently about anything I say, feel free to let me know - I love hearing other thoughts and opinions.

Another thing to know about me, I hate romance movies. I hate the romance genre as a whole. It should never be considered a stand-alone genre because romance is just a type of platform for character development, and relationship development. Romance is a sub-genre. It should always stay in the sub-genre category because the main genre is what’s supposed to define the movie/book/etc.

Here’s some ground rules I have for aspiring writers who plan to write a story that’s entirely based around Romance:

DON’T.

Just, no. Scrap that and throw it in the fire if you have to.

A story should never just be about a character’s relationship with another character (or characters). A story needs to have something that drives the protagonist on some sort of journey, whether it’s trying to save the world, or just self discovery. “Fifty Shades of Grey” is arguably the worst book ever written, because the story drives around a romantic(?) plot.

Let me explain: Anastasia Steele; what do we know about her? She’s a grad student, and she interviews Christian Grey for her friend who is unable to do it. She bites her lip a lot, and is easily manipulated into questionable situations, and that’s about it. That’s all we know about her. Sure, she likes to read and write, but what else is there? She has no personality. Every time there’s an opportunity to learn something about her, the story takes a U turn back to her relationship with a hot rich guy who’s into some weird kinky stuff. Christian Grey is more fascinating than Anastasia, and she’s supposed to be the goddamned protagonist - not him.

Sure, maybe if you don’t want to read quality content with proper development, then go ahead and read that book. Some people prefer to only read about romance and nothing else, but I personally can’t stand it. I can’t tolerate them because suddenly the protagonists of these types of stories become Mary Sues.

Anastasia is the definition of a Mary Sue, and Mary Sue’s are the worst. If you don’t already know, a Mary Sue is basically just a perfect character with very little or no flaws, and no conflicts that they have to concur - or goals they need to achieve. Anastasia has no goals in life - at least, none that we know of - and her only flaw I can think of is that she’s easily manipulated.

But the protagonist in “Confessions of a Shopaholic” is the exact opposite of a Mary Sue, and that’s because the romance is kept as a sub-plot. I’ll say it as a cliche so you can understand what I’m saying: Romance is supposed to be like the icing on a cake. So when romance is used as the main plot, you’re just eating a cake made entirely of icing - and that gets unbearable after a few bites.

Now that I got all of that off of my chest, let’s go onwards to my review!

I was pleasantly surprised when I scrolled through Netflix and found a movie I once enjoyed as a kid; Confessions of a Shopaholic. I decided to watch this movie out of curiosity, to see if I only liked it back then because I was willing to watch anything in front of my face at the time. Now that I’m older and have seen too many movies to count, I have more acquired tastes than I did as a child.

After watching the movie a few nights ago, I turned it off and laid down in my bed, ready to wake up at 5:30am for work the next morning. However, I couldn’t sleep. An irrelevant fact about me; I have insomnia, and one of the reasons why I might have it is because I’ve always over analyzed the shit out of everything. So when I was in bed that night, I was stricken with the epiphany that I loved this movie. I was trying to mentally argue with myself, but I’d always be able to rebuttal my own argument with but’s and well’s, and eventually I succumbed to accepting that this movie is arguably one of my favourites of all time.

So here I am, ready to argue to you that this is the best Dramatic Comedy ever made. Why? Because the romance is a sub-plot.

The movie is about Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher), a journalist who aspires to work for her dream fashion magazine called Allite. This idea is relevant to the year the movie was released. But if it were released in 2017, it’d be about a woman wanting to work for a platform like Buzzfeed or something.

Anyways, Rebecca Bloomwood is working for a gardening magazine when we see her at the start of the film, and she’s on her way to an interview with Allite. Oh, and she’s obsessed with shopping. She has too many credit cards, and she buys anything she sees since the store mannequins come to life and call her in like a siren. I could make a whole theory about how she might be schizophrenic, but that’s not really the focused subject-matter for a movie review.

On her way to the interview, she sees a beautiful green scarf on display, and the mannequin sells it to her. She’s easily convinced to buy it, and uses all of her credit cards and a fifty dollar bill to pay for it, and yet she still doesn’t have enough to buy it. She runs out to the street, and asks the hotdog guy to spare some cash for her - completely cutting off everyone in line. After begging for money and making up a bullshit story that it’s for her freezing poor aunt, a 20 dollar bill is shoved into camera view. The man she cut in front of offers her the money just to get her out of his way so he can get his precious hotdog. She buys the scarf, and goes to Allite, but the job was given to a taller, blonde, and perfect woman before she even got a chance with an interview.

Rebecca is given advice from the male secretary to go to another magazine that’s a part of the same branch. That way, she can work her way up to Allite by starting off somewhere less appealing to her. The magazine looking for journalists is a savings magazine (the irony is hilarious) and she finds out that the editor is a man named Lucas Brandon (Hugh Dancy) - who just so happens to be the hotdog guy who gave her 20 bucks for a scarf she was trying to get for her freezing aunt.

She has a horribly awkward interview, and it ends with him scribbling her name off of the sheet, and her leaving shameful for lying to him about the green scarf.

The garden magazine she works for shuts down without telling their employees, so now she’s unemployed and drowning in debt. Her roommate and best friend offers her help, and she ends up drunkenly writing two letters. One, is a detailed piece on clothing prices being inconvenient addressed to Allite in hopes of getting a job. Two, is a twenty dollar bill and a detailed description on how Lucas can “stick it up his ass”.

Rebecca gets a call the next day from Lucas from the Savings magazine, saying how he loved her piece on clothing prices and offers her a job. She instantly freaks out, realizing she mislabelled the mail and accidentally sent Allite twenty dollars while telling them to stick it up their ass.

She gets the mail back before the woman in charge can read it, and she accepts the job offer at the Savings magazine.

Now, I don’t want to just explain the entire plot step by step, but that is essentially the first thirty minutes of the film - AKA, ACT ONE. What do we learn about Rebecca? We know she’s a writer, and that she’s also willing to lie to get what she wants. She’s quirky and awkward, but she also has a horrible addiction to shopping that has driven her to be over ten thousand dollars in debt. She’s also a hard worker and knows her goal. The choice she makes to drive her journey forward is accepting the job at the savings magazine. Rebecca Bloomwood is fascinating because she has a personality.

Throughout ACT TWO, we find Rebecca building up her career as she becomes the famous “Girl In The Green Scarf” - the name chosen by her boss, Lucas. She writes good financial advice for the readers of the magazine, and ends up becoming a worldwide phenomena. Her relationships thrive as she builds a strong friendship with her boss. Eventually, her friendship with her boss turns into romance, and it’s done so naturally. (SIDE NOTE: The scene where Lucas confesses his feelings for Rebecca is extremely cheesy, but it’s the only thing slightly unbearable to watch in the entire film.)

While this is happening, her shopping addiction is getting progressively worse. The movie portrays it as humorous, but it’s no longer funny when she hits rock bottom - losing everyone but her parents.

This movie is extremely funny, but it has a dark undertone about a person trying to get over a mental addiction. Rebecca is obviously depressed, and she uses shopping as a way to bring a brief moment of bliss. It’s like taking a drug injection. She gets a moment of high, but then it immediately goes away, making her feel worse than before she took her dose of pure bliss.

But then she saves herself by selling all of her unneeded clothes (she even sells the famous green scarf) to make enough money to pay back her debt. She turns down a job offer to Allite because she learns that she never truly wanted that job since it was just like shopping - it would make her happy for a moment, but then her bliss would soon disappear.

At the very end, she is no longer phased by the mannequins that scarily come to life, and she no longer sees them trying to be a siren call to her anymore. She ends up feeling eternal bliss in her personal achievement. The whole time, the movie tricked you into thinking her goal was to work at Allite, but in actuality, it was to cure her addiction problem. The joy she feels from being able to say “no, I don’t need it” lasts longer, therefore making her happy.

Then we see Lucas, who has the green scarf, and is standing there next to the stores in front of her. She ends up in a relationship with him, and describes him as being better than any store or credit card because he never denies or rejects her. She even inspired him to quit his job and open his own company that she ends up working at with him.

Why did I love this movie? Well I grade movies in three different categories:

Technical

Story

Entertainment

Technically, it was good. The movie was visually appealing with no awkward camera angles, and the performances were done convincingly well. I was surprised Hugh Dancy was the love interest in this film. I didn’t really know who he was before I saw Hannibal, So seeing this movie after watching that show gave me a whole new perspective on him as an actor. He can obviously play various roles, and is well rounded with no limits to what he’s willing to do. Isla Fisher also did a good performance buy keeping her character real and relatable. The soundtrack was very subtle and stayed in the background being almost unnoticeable/not distracting. My favourite shot was the ending where the screen fades to black, but the green scarf stays on camera, emphasizing it’s symbolism of her achievements in the movie. They seemed to put more of their focus on the other two aspects which is why I’m giving this section a 6/10.

The story was incredible, It had me laughing hysterically for most of the film. There’s a few scenes in particular I’ll never forget, like when Rebecca and Lucas were dancing, and she kept smacking him in the face with her fan by accident. Or when he first hired her and asked her to find a good angle, and immediately afterwards she Googles “What are good angles”. But, a lot of the things I were laughing at were the corny scenes. Specifically, the scene where he confesses his feelings for her. It was really rushed - not the development, per se, but the scene itself was what was rushed. It was maybe a 1-2 minute scene on the balcony of a building, and they exchange maybe a total of 7 sentences overall to each other in the scene. The scene should have been presented differently, and they maybe shouldn’t have them kiss there either. I really loved the conflict with her addiction, and that was what made me fall in love with this movie. It was showing a real person struggling with a real problem people could relate to. Another thing I loved about this was how the romance was left as a nice icing on top to a story - which is what it’s supposed to be. The love interest was, technically shoved into our face with how the 20 dollar bill took up the whole camera for a moment. But regardless of the camera technique, he was introduced very subtly. It was enough to allow the audience to know that we may see this guy again, but they didn’t shove it into your face all slow motion like, “This is the love of her life right here.” They also allowed their relationship to grow at a natural pace, but the confession scene was just a mess. I wish they put the same effort into the confession scene as they did with their development as a whole. I also love the symbolism! The scarf seems to symbolize Rebecca and Lucas’ relationship, but it also symbolises her achievements, and the overall message about consuming oneself into materialistic things. Since there were some unbearable corny scenes, I’m giving this section a 7/10.

Latsly, the entertainment value. Did I enjoy watching the movie? Yes I did. Sure, it was a bit of a guilty pleasure at times since most of the jokes were incredibly cheesy. But I really enjoyed how in depth this movie really is if you pay attention. The corniness is purposely masking the depressing aspect since that’s exactly what the main character is doing herself. She’s trying to hide how depressed she is from everyone by allowing herself to stay quirky, and giving herself a high off of shopping to keep herself happy and content. I’m giving this section an 8/10

Overall, I give this movie a 70% as my critical rating. However, this movie has slipped its way into my heart, and is now a movie I’d recommend to people. If anyone asks me some good movies with a good romance, this will definitely be on that list I’d give them.

More reviews will come, but please remember: nobody’s opinion on a movie matters except for your own. The only person who can truly convince you of something is yourself.

#movie reviews #writing #review #movie review #confessions of a shopaholic #hugh dancy #isla fisher #comedy #drama #romance #writing tips #writing blog #writing blogs #informal essay #casual review #queued post

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