The problem with making films specifically for our times is that by the time they come out it’s likely they are actually for someone else’s. Do
we really want to know about shopaholics at a time when no one has money to buy anything?

PJ Hogan’s bright and sparky but terminally silly adaptation of English author Madeleine Wickham’s books (written under the name of Sophie Kinsella) has Isla Fisher as Rebecca, a ditzy shopper who has run up huge credit-card bills and can’t pay them.

This makes her decide to get a job and, when the fashion magazine she works on goes bust, she gets another one on a financial weekly where editor Luke (Hugh Dancy) likes her plain-speaking prose. She becomes a celebrity since the readers like it, too. But the credit-card bruisers are still after her and everything looks like falling into the abyss despite the fact that Luke loves her.

The whole thing is a piece of romantic codswallop that relies on the ordinary but feisty charm of Fisher and the dashing good looks of Dancy, a Hugh Grant clone if ever I saw one. And it sort of works provided you don’t remember the depressing time we’re actually living in now.

It’s a fantasy pure and simple, given the gloss of unreality that Hollywood uses to disguise the fact that it can’t see reality inches away from its eyes. The best moments come when Rebecca attends a Shopaholics Anonymous meeting where she explains the delights of her obsession so well that everyone goes straight out to plunder Saks.