The Girl in the Green Scarf

“A man will never love you or treat you as well as a store.  If a man doesn’t fit, you can’t exchange him seven days later for a gorgeous cashmere sweater.  And a store always smells good.  A store can awaken a lust for things you never even knew you needed.  And when your fingers grasp those shiny new bags…oh yes….oh YES….oh no.  I spent $900?”

I just watched “Confessions of a Shopaholic” last night.  The movie is based on a book of the same title in a series called “Shopaholics” by chick lit author Sophie Kinsella.  I never read the book, so I can only comment on the movie in its own right.  The above quote was the movie’s redeeming moment.  It basically summed the whole plot up best actually.  It was a simple romantic comedy where girl meets boy, loses boy because of a misunderstanding, gets boy back and they all live happily ever after.  Beyond that essential plot, the movie is about a young journalist named Rebecca Bloomwood who has a spending problem.  Don’t we all!  She is mercilessly hounded by a debt-collector while accidentally (and ironically) writing articles for a money magazine under the moniker “The Girl in the Green Scarf!”  The editor at the magazine is the object of her desire.  So to get him to love her, she does what any woman in a romantic comedy would do:  pad him with lies.  Essentially, she’s living a lie, because she has an addiction.  To shopping.

Anyway, the movie was light, diet lite, but nontheless a fun way to waste two hours of your life.  There were a good few laughs however.  One in particular, where she has her briefcase propped up on a table, and this leggy blond walks in and stuns everyone, to the point where the buckle busts and pops open on her briefcase!  That was subtle.  How she rubs perfume samples from the magazine over her neck in the waiting room for a job interview.  Plus, Fred Armisen was great as that middle-management-ass-kisser-cock kinda guy.  You know your workplace has one (or a few)!

The rest was try-too-hard humour, plus there were a few inconsistencies.  For example, she freaks out over having racked her credit card up $900.  That Gucci bag she featured in the opening sequence alone would have cost that much.  She really should have been way more in debt than she actually was.  I mention this because I think the moral of the story was “don’t spent money or you’ll be in crazy debt”, and she was only in debt $16,000!  I have friends in debt from careless spending and they’ve just about quadrupled that amount at least.  Oh, also, she sells all her clothes in a trunk sale and ends up making enough to cover all her debts?  By selling last year’s stuff?  Doubt it!  Unless it’s vintage or has some kind of famous attachment, fashion depreciates worse than cars!  So, for her, it was really an easy-way-out, because in reality, most people take their debts to the grave with them.  Why couldn’t she have gone to see a financial planner and been setup with a debt repayment plan?  That’s more likely what she would have had to do.

Regardless, Hugh Dancy was very charming as the male lead and Isla Fisher’s hair is definitely enviable!  So call me “the girl with the green eyes!”