From The Daily Beast:
Confessions of a Shopaholic has got a serious case of bad timing. Not only is the happy-go-lucky tale of a journalist who begins dispensing financial advice while $16,000 in the hole set before credit-card debt was a national emergency, it’s also an artifact from a time before magazines were downsizing like gastric-bypass patients.
Shopaholic may be the last hurrah for one of Hollywood’s most time-tested archetypes—the sassy magazine editor as romantic-comedy heroine.
As with appletinis and the entire He’s Just Not That Into You book-movie complex, the recent proliferation of movie editrixes can be blamed largely on Sex and the City—Carrie Bradshaw established “columnist” in the popular imagination as an ultra glamorous, supremely feminine profession in which schmoozing, shtupping, and shopping constituted high-paying work.
Other films burnishing the perks of magazine work soon followed, including How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (Kate Hudson gets paid to seduce, reject, love Matthew McConaughey), 13 Going on 30 (Jennifer Garner lives out her creatively rewarding childhood dream of editing a teen magazine), Hitch (Eva Mendes’ gossip columnist steals Will Smith’s heart), The Devil Wears Prada (abused assistant Anne Hathaway still scores free designer clothes, makeover), and on the small screen Lipstick Jungle (Kim Raver finds time to run pop-culture magazine Bonfire while screwing a hottie half her age). Shopaholic follows in these footsteps: A young woman, Rebecca Bloomwood, takes a job at Successful Savings, becomes instantly famous, attends swanky parties in Miami, black-tie affairs in New York and lands her hunky editor as a life partner.
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