Confessions of a Shopaholic

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Breathless and petite yet powerfully in-your-face, Fisher combines dizzy femininity and no-nonsense verve in the manner of a classic screwball heroine. She's like Carole Lombard reborn as a tiny angel-faced dynamo.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Athima Chansanchai

If cheesy, feel-good riches-to-reason romantic comedies are yours, this is your fix. It's a harmless indulgence that, like shopping, may make you feel good for the short term, but later you'll need more.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It glories in its silliness, and the actors are permitted the sort of goofy acting that distinguished screwball comedy. We get double takes, slow burns, pratfalls, exploding clothes wardrobes, dropped trays, tear-away dresses, missing maids of honor, overnight fame, public disgrace and not, amazingly, a single obnoxious cat or dog.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

This movie has no light to shed on the matter. It is its own contradiction: a film about confessions in which nothing much is confessed.

Premiere Krista Soriano

As unrealistic as the talking mannequins, but we’re pleasantly surprised by how good this movie makes us feel.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

The degree to which Shopaholic actually works is a testament to the looks, charm, and comedic chops of Fisher, who stole "Wedding Crashers" and has a gift for slapstick that places her somewhere between Téa Leoni and Lucille Ball in the pantheon of foxy redheaded physical comediennes.

Washington Post John Anderson

Rebecca may owe everybody for everything, but Fisher definitely owns the movie. She is the only one outside of Ritter who gives a bona fide performance.

Variety Todd McCarthy

As a young lady who can't say no to a beautiful dress or accessory, Isla Fisher is not to be denied, and her irrepressible comic personality overcomes a number of the film's impediments.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The problem nipping at the designer heels of Confessions is not the state of the economy but, rather, the film's predictability.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

The film's recycled nature is most evident in director P.J. Hogan's attempt to marry the farcical hijinks of an "I Love Lucy" episode to an addiction scenario that would not be out of place in "The Lost Weekend."

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Confessions is no more than a painless time-waster. But the beguiling Fisher is well worth the investment.

Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

Though you might wonder whether there's room in a movie marketplace that already feels overstocked with romantic comedies, Confessions of a Shopaholic arrives fashionably late and dressed to kill.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It's not the retro attitudes in "Confessions" that bother me (at least not much). It's the lack of laughs.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

There are some mildly amusing turns from costars like Kristin Scott Thomas, playing an icy editor, and Robert Stanton, as her frustrated debt collector.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The problem with Confessions of a Shopaholic isn't conspicuous consumption. It's ostentatious idiocy.

Chicago Tribune Jessica Reaves

A thin, largely unfunny comedy that marries lazy filmmaking with bad timing.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

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

Slate Dana Stevens

If you spin out the unintended analogy of Confessions of a Shopaholic to the current financial crisis, the film starts to mutate from a not-that-funny comedy into a tragic allegory.

Salon.com Thomas Rogers

A loud, garish and very untimely romantic comedy.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

The end product is surprisingly charmless -- a shrill "Devil Wears Prada"/"Bridget Jones"/"Sex and the City" knockoff that keeps threatening to fall apart at the seams.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

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 Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

I think that the perfect name for the chick in a chick flick is Rebecca Bloomwood. I know that if Charles Dickens had possessed the good sense to write chick flicks, he could not have done better than Rebecca Bloomwood.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Confessions of a Shopaholic -- a "Devil Wears Prada" for Chico's customers.

San Francisco Chronicle Reyhan Harmanci

It's a shame that "Confessions" doesn't aim higher because there is a great film to be made about the consumer bait-and-switch that has led so many Americans to live beyond their means.

USA Today Claudia Puig

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

TV Guide Perry Seibert

Lets down both its actress and the audience.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The comedy is slapstick, the colors Day Glo, the outcome inevitable.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It has been a long time since I came as close to walking out of a movie as I did with Confessions of a Shopaholic. Not only did I find this production to be irritating, unfunny, and lacking in entertainment value, but I found its underlying slavishness to a culture of consumption to be morally repugnant.

Village Voice Melissa Anderson

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.