Confessions Of A Shopaholic (PG)

We say this film yesterday for our belated Valentine's Day Out, and it really is rather good. A few things really stand out:

a) Although it is a film for grown ups, there is no nudity, swearing, violence or pyrotehnics, hence the PG certificate, which makes you realise that none of things are actually essential. The first full on snog that Isla Fisher gives Hugh Dancy is actually completely incongrous, where the whole film is crying out for a shy peck on the lips.

b) Isla is a comedy genius, she walks into plate glass doors, drops letter in the street, dances like a nutter, destroys her own evening wear and sprays dinner guests with food etc with absolute goofy panache, while remaining thoroughly charming throughout.

c) John Lithgow hardly looks a day older than he did in 'Footloose', but the others - Kristin Scott Thomas (who is now French), Joan Cusack, John Goodman and Julie Hagerty - all look frighteningly old and tired in close up.

d) The maths doesn't stack up. Isla has run up $16,000-odd in credit and store card debts on clothes, shoes, perfume and handbags, and she manages to repay them all by having an auction of all her old tat. With one or two items (e.g. the green scarf), the bidders are clearly prepared to overpay as she is by now a minor celebrity, but as a rule of thumb, second hand clothes wouldn't sell for more than a fifth of what they cost new, so by reverse logic, her credit card and store card debts must have been in the order of $80,000. Hmm.

e) The only other thing that spoils it is the fact that Hugh Dancy is you typical fairy tale prince - our heroine thinks that he is merely the overworked and underpaid editor of an obscure finance magazine, but it turns out that he is actually the scion of some great financial and property owning dynasty.