What Year is It Anyway?
posted July 2, 2009 6:02 AM
If you're like me -- an admittedly terrifying prospect -- you go to so many movies and get so many videos that ultimately you have trouble remembering what if anything you've actually seen and what you thought about the films at the time. Hey, I'm not complaining, just describing something of an occupational hazard.
Anyway, I was looking through my stack of DVDs for review yesterday and noticed a two disc package, from the nice folks at Touchstone, of the adorable Isla Fisher in Confessions of a Shopaholic. And swear to god, for a moment or two, I couldn't for the life of me remember a thing about it other than I'd (probably) killed the better part of an hour and half enduring it in a theater at some point.
Fortunately, the site you're reading me on has a very efficient search engine, and I soon discovered that I'd written the following thumbnail review back in February --
An airhead runs up a sixteen thousand dollar credit card bill on high-fashion scarves and in the current catastrophic economic climate I'm supposed to care?
-- and it all came rushing back.
Anyway, I watched the thing again last night, and I more or less stand by the assessment. It's a very peculiar film, in a certain sense -- a quintessentially 80s yuppie consumerist fantasy washed up on the shores of the 21st century with very little awareness of the fact the world has changed since the days of Alex Keaton. That said, Fisher really is adorable as the aforementioned airhead, and it would be curmudgeonly of me (not to mention a lie) to say that I didn't laugh from time to time.
Here's the trailer to give you an idea what I'm talking about.
Touchstone's two-disc set features an exemplary transfer and a couple of moderately interesting bonuses (outtakes, deleted scenes, and a music video); plus you can download a digital copy of the flick onto your iPod, athough I can't imagine really wanting to to. In any case, you can -- and I won't hold it against you if you do -- order it here
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Steve Simels has written about music and movies for Sound and Vision magazine (formerly Stereo Review) since the early 70s. He has also contributed to Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide and the Wall Street Journal. He’s the author of “Gender Chameleons: Androgyny in Rock n Roll” (Arbor House, 1985), and blogs at PowerPop.blogspot.com. His ambition in life is to play the Leslie Howard role in a remake of “Petrified Forest.”

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Cousin Kevin said:
She's certainly cute, but I must say that trailer is kind of nauseating. And the only decent gag comes literally at the very end....
July 2, 2009 9:09 AM
Gwen De Marco said:
Not gonna "spend" any time on this one! :-)
July 2, 2009 9:31 AM
Sam Spoons said:
I know what you mean about forgetting movies you know you've seen. To this day, I remember absolutely nothing about Speed Racer, although I'm positive I paid money to see it....
July 2, 2009 3:00 PM