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03-11-2005, 05:17 PM
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|  Both talk about a few scenes in the movie that you might want to watch instead of reading about. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/ar...on/11heff.html A Shallow, Devious Party Girl Undergoes a Moral Makeover By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN Published: March 11, 2005 Froth goes flat in "Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber," a dispiriting television movie that has its premiere tomorrow. "Confessions" is the story of a shallow, devious advertising executive, Katya Livingston (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who has to put on a show of finding a soul after pushing everyone around for the better part of two hours. With a diary format cribbed from Bridget Jones and a palette imported from "Legally Blonde," "Confessions" - which is based on the novel by Adèle Lang - certainly hits its chick-flick marks. But who cares about these marks, really? The movie opens on a bride, Dove Greenstein (Stefanie von Pfetten), whose husband has disappeared. She discovers him under Katya's skirt in a back room; Katya lightly apologizes and flees the scene. Dove, it turns out, is a bad enemy to have. She's giving a huge party that Katya cannot bear being excluded from. Our heroine's quest for romance begins with her desire to get to this party - and ends, awww, with her realization that there's more to life than parties. Jennifer Love Hewitt, to her credit, does not shirk any responsibilities here; she laughs when she's meant to laugh, and cries at the end. Through dint of will, she might even have had audiences give Katya a chance - except that it's impossible. The character, as written, is just not likable. Set in San Francisco, the movie does exhibit affection for its city, and the look of the ad agency where Katya works, as well as some of the outdoor scenes, successfully suggests a Northern California aesthetic. Here Katya's vulgar affectations - her love of designer clothes, her use of "darling" - are played as bona fide eccentricities and not just standard clichés for a Manhattanite. Katya's silliness does need to seem eccentric, even creative, if it's to justify the obeisance that her friends and colleagues mysteriously grant her. While she flounces around, they all stay true to her: the hippie Eliza (Sonja Bennett), the gay pal Ferguson (Joseph Lawrence), the twitty party friend Frangiapani (Natassia Malthe) and finally the spray-tanned love interest, Charles (Colin Ferguson). Katya's hasty moral transformation comes through a Ugandan child she adopts for tax purposes, and the love of good Charles, which is laughably undermotivated. Each inspires her to acknowledge the desperate measures she takes to keep up appearances, and in so confessing to reform. It's a lightning-quick changeover, and not only does it not redeem this trashy movie, it undermines it. The final scenes force Katya to renounce the mess of a woman she's been for most of the movie, and audiences will be eager to renounce the mess, too. --- http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/40972.htm WAY TOO MUCH TO 'CONFESS' From the best-selling novel of the same name, "Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber" stars Jennifer Love Hewitt as Katya, a San Fran exec who is an incredibly shallow, social-climbing shopaholic. Part "Bridget Jones Diary," part MasterCard commercial and part "About Schmidt," "Social Climber" tries to fit too much into a not-very-well structured format. Let me explain: a la "Bridget," Katya keeps a diary; she recites her purchases aloud in MasterCard "priceless" commercial parlance; and like "Schmidt," she reads postcards she sends and receives from an "adopted" orphan. (She's sponsoring the boy for 79 cents a week or something so she can get invited to a charity event.) Mixing too many subplots into one, "Sociopath" begins with Katya at her friend's wedding receiving oral sex from the bridegroom in the bedroom. Right. Unfortunately, the bride is also the socialite (although you'd be hard-pressed to find a socialite who says things like "anyways") who is in charge of the social event Katya is desperate to go to. Right. From the wedding, we go to a phone call between Katya and her tax accountant, who is in jail and being fearfully led away by a giant, lusty inmate. Wrong. Katya, we learn, is a very creative ad person who goes to work in strapless cocktail dresses, tube tops and anything else that can be worn without straps or sleeves. Between going out every night with the requisite gay friend (Joseph Lawrence) to different weather-themed nightclubs (one night it's "Blizzard," the next "Rain" and so on), she works and tries to meet the perfect man. Bingo! Into the mix comes a handsome lawyer (Colin Ferguson) who works on the fourth floor of her office building. Determined to meet him, she engages her co-worker to ride the elevator with her for hours in the hopes of bumping into him. Even though the handsome lawyer just happens to be her co-worker's lawyer, the co-worker is unaware that it's the same man Katya has fallen for. Or something. It's not believable. But neither is the stuff with the little African orphan - which is supposed to be edgy - and just comes out kind of ugly. As Katya views the child's life: "He lives in a shack with no air conditioning, DSL or TiVo - I don't think he can be anymore discontented than he already is!" While there are certainly fun moments here (and they usually involve Colin Ferguson, who is irresistible) the writing makes Katya and her cleavage, come across as downright unlikable. One plus: it does have a happy ending. [ March 11, 2005, 03:26 PM: Message edited by: Xator ] |
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