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Ishtar
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The Devils
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The Pirates of Penzance
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The Fortune
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-30-
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Betrayal
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Play It As It Lays
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The Outfit
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Alex in Wonderland
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The Legend of Lylah Clare
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In The Cool of the Day
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That Cold Day in the Park
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Thumb Trippin'
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Midas Run
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At Long Last Love
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Brewster McCloud
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Outcast of the Islands
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Run of the Arrow
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House of Secrets
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Saint Joan
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Macabre
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The Fiend Who Walked the West
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Five Gates to Hell
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The Chapman Report
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Bachelor Flat
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The Chalk Garden
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A Thousand Clowns
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You're a Big Boy Now
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Dark of the Sun
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Skidoo
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Last Summer
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Tropic of Cancer
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I Never Sang for My Father
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Sometimes a Great Notion
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Marriage of a Young Stockbroker
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The Music Lovers
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Drive, He Said
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W.C. Fields and Me
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Citizens Band
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Twilight's Last Gleaming
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Looking for Mr. Goodbar
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Girlfriends
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Movie Movie
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Players
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Rich Kids
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Nightwing
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Screams of a Winter's Night
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When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?
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Simon
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When the Wind Blows
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Patty Hearst
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Drowning by Numbers
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Haunted Summer
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The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
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City of Hope
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The thrust of this 2.3 L.A. Times Claudia Eller piece is that the current economic calamity makes the 2.13 release Confessions of a Shopaholic, a comedy about overspending and subsequent debt, seem almost absurdly unappealing.

Eller runs optimistic, damn-the-torpedos quotes from Shopaholic producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney marketing chief Jim Gallagher. But the quote that sticks is from USC entertainment business instructor Mark Young, to wit: "If you just lost your home and can't pay your bills, the last thing you want to see is someone representing greed and excess."

I ran a short quoteless riff on this same idea last January 8th.

Nightlight<< previous | next >>Usual Doesn't Apply

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on February 3, 2009 at 8:57 PM

comment #1

D.Z. says ...

http://omg.yahoo.com/news/stephen-king-on-twilight-author-stephenie-meyer-can-t-write-worth-a-darn/18406?nc

Posted by D.Z. at February 3, 2009 10:17 PM

comment #2

scooterzz says ...

at the press day for this, bruckheimer was spinning like a top....trying to convince everyone (maybe even himself) that this is EXACTLY what people in a recession want to see on screen...

Posted by scooterzz at February 4, 2009 12:35 AM

comment #3

lazespud says ...

Have you seen the poster for this monstrosity? It's the most generic, stupid thing ever, and it features Isla Fisher, who certainly seemed like a fairly smart actress before this. Clearly she has better taste in boyfriends than she does in scripts.

Posted by lazespud at February 4, 2009 3:39 AM

comment #4

Circumvrent says ...

Echoing what went on in the HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU's post's comments, I don't know that this is going to be a turn-off for people. And more to the point, I don't know that people analyze their own movie choices to that degree. People who see (or in some cases, text) during a movie once a week, no matter what, aren't going to be any more turned off by this than by Paul Blart (which I assume is also an ode to mindless consumerism in its own way). And if you just lost your home and can't pay your bills, odds are you aren't going to a movie anyway.

Posted by Circumvrent at February 4, 2009 4:30 AM

comment #5

K. Bowen says ...

Then why do all the great screwball comedies of the thirties feature female heiresses?

Posted by K. Bowen at February 4, 2009 6:46 AM

comment #6

btwnproductions says ...

Well, what to do? Not release it till everyone has their job back and the Dow is golden again? It captures the zeitgeist--February 2008's, not 2009's. It may satisfy a craving for nostalgia...and, though I don't know the material, I'm pretty sure our heroine will learn the error of her bag-buying ways by the third act.

Posted by btwnproductions at February 4, 2009 7:17 AM

comment #7

Rich S. says ...

The latest trailers for it are downplaying the shopping aspects. And I understand the books, which are only marginally about shopping, are very, very popular. I'm sure it will do fine.

I hope so. If it acts as a stealth delivery system for Isla Fisher, I'm all for it. I'm more than a little tired of Kate Hudson and Katherine Heigl.

Posted by Rich S. at February 4, 2009 7:29 AM

comment #8

corey3rd says ...

The problem is we don't see this woman comically suffer in the ads. We don't mind insane spending if we get to see them get everything ripped away - think Steve Martin in the Jerk.

at least with Paul Blart - we saw this guy as a moron who gets bopped around.

Posted by corey3rd at February 4, 2009 7:30 AM

comment #9

Hallick says ...

It's a strange genre, this one. What used to be positioned as the repellent and spoiled girlfriend/fiance in comedies of old is now the protagonist (Legally Blonde, Sex & The City, The House Bunny). They're like the loveable offspring of Gordon Gecko's "greed is good" speech from Wall Street.

If the horrors of that Sex & The City movie didn't cause the country to rise up as one and storm New York City in disgust, then I don't know that anybody's going to raise half an eyebrow over this one. I have a female friend who is in dire straits right now, but she's still giddy to see this film.

Posted by Hallick at February 4, 2009 7:34 AM

comment #10

Hallick says ...

"The problem is we don't see this woman comically suffer in the ads."

The problem I get from the ads is the sense that we're supposed to love this character for being such a senseless shopaholic. She comes off like the symbol of everything wrongheaded in the financial life of this country, but yet, look! Isn't she fabulous? Come on everybody! Don't let her dreams of name-dropping luxury go by the wayside. That's just un-american! Clap your hands like Peter Pan and bring this girl's credit back to life!

Posted by Hallick at February 4, 2009 7:44 AM

comment #11

DeafBrownTrashPunk says ...

I hope the movie flops miserably.

Posted by DeafBrownTrashPunk at February 4, 2009 7:46 AM

comment #12

MikeSchaeferSF says ...

On the other hand, you'd think the timing would be perfect for The International and its "banks are evil" theme.

Posted by MikeSchaeferSF at February 4, 2009 7:59 AM

comment #13

TKC says ...

I agree with K. Bowen -- the big comedies of the thirties were lavish screwball spectacles about the wealthy. Movies are about escapism, aspiration, and living vicariously, and for a decent portion of the audience, a shopping montage is as much of a thrill as a car chase or a shoot-out. I think Mark Young's wrong -- the last thing that someone who's lost their job and can't pay their bills wants to see isn't a movie about greed and excess, it's a movie about someone who loses their job and can't pay their bills.

Posted by TKC at February 4, 2009 8:24 AM

comment #14

BurmaShave says ...

"K. Bowen Author Profile Page says ...

Then why do all the great screwball comedies of the thirties feature female heiresses?"

Thank you. I don't know where this idea that films about spoiled and well-off people don't succeed in a economic downturn came from, but it flies in the face of film history and the idea of entertainment. Not that I don't think this movie will be repugnant.

Posted by BurmaShave at February 4, 2009 8:59 AM

comment #15

lipranzer says ...

The thirties screwball comedies may have featured heiresses for female leads, but they were real strong, intelligent women, not a collection of ditzy mannerisms on parade. I mean, really - can you imagine Carole Lombard, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Jean Arthur et al playing characters like the ones that pass for romantic comedies these days? They'd eat characters like those for breakfast.

Posted by lipranzer at February 4, 2009 9:51 AM

comment #16

dukedog says ...

What DeafBrownTrashPunk said.

Posted by dukedog at February 4, 2009 11:48 AM

comment #17

arch451 says ...

If you look at the history of film, movies generally do not acknowledge current events. The films of the 30s do not address the Great Depression. You would never guess from the films of the 40s that the holocaust is happening or what WWII is like. The films of the 60s and 70s convey changing social values but don’t seem to know what to say about Vietnam. The movies of this decade are ignorant of our unsustainable global society, as are we.

Movies exhibit the fallacies of the present while telling stories of the past, perpetually ignorant of our future.

Posted by arch451 at February 4, 2009 1:41 PM

comment #18

Doug says ...

The books are great and so is Isla. The story is actually perfectly suited for the times - someone who has been spending freely who is suddenly faced with the reality of debt. Sound like any country we know?

Posted by Doug at February 4, 2009 2:36 PM

comment #19

vjp81955 says ...

If you look at the history of film, movies generally do not acknowledge current events. The films of the 30s do not address the Great Depression

Plain and utter nonsense. Many indeed addressed it -- think of "Our Daily Bread," "Gabriel Over The White House" or "My Man Godfrey," for starters. And all three will be shown by Film Forum in NYC in a four-week, 51-film Depression retrospective, "Breadlines & Champagne," that begins this Friday (http://www.filmforum.org/films/breadlines.html).

Posted by vjp81955 at February 5, 2009 8:45 AM

comment #20