Its rare that a moment in a deeply flawed film completely signifies (and transcends) its tone deafness, but at one point in the preternaturally ridiculous, surprisingly star-studded, hatched well before the Recession panic Confessions of a Shopaholic, John Goodman, who’s made a side career of late playing dad to kids who drive fast and spend a lot, looks out at the a small New Jersey bay where he likes to come with his family. He stands next to his beautiful daughter, the “shopaholic” of the title, and offers a bit of perspective. He says, looking into Isla Fisher’s deeply vacant, always pleading eyes, “If the US can be billions of dollars in debt and survive, you can too.”

Of course, Mr. Goodman’s character, who despite the name Graham Bloomwood, is a real meat-and-potatoes spendthrift type in this movie’s desperate, dated shorthand, has just spent his life savings on a gargantuan Winnebago. This after reading a hackneyed article that his daughter (“The Woman in the Green Scarf,” as she’s dubbed in her byline) wrote in “Successful Saving Magazine” about the differences between cost and worth. Yet all the credibility Goodman needs to deliver that bit of dialogue are the lines etched in his face and our familiarity with his particular brand of warmth – Confessions of a Shopaholic is truly a movie all about facile appearances, with reality and human observation having very little space in these proceedings, even for a romantic comedy; real insight is too difficult for such a fragile construction as this, one where the protagonist, in her initial interview with a financial magazine, refers to the current “fish crisis”, trying to sound well versed after spying the first few letters of “fiscal” from beneath some documents on her soon to be editor/lover’s desk.

At some point in this mashup of The Devil Wears Prada and Sex in the City, two films producer Jerry Bruckheimer clearly saw the box office returns for and went out of his way to emulate, any reasonable person will begin to hate Fisher’s Rebecca Bloomwood and the astonishingly unsympathetic portrayal the actress, in her above the title debut, deliver. A truly vapid redheaded “journalist” (who clearly hasn’t an ounce of talent for constructing sentences, but is pretty good at lying to herself and everyone around her) with a $9,000 credit debt that an “evil” collection agency (now there’s a bad guy we can all root against, especially if they have a haircut as stiff as Robert Stanton’s antagonizing credit agent) is now stalking her for, she has full conversations with beckoning store window mannequins outside of midtown boutiques as she tries to persuade herself not to buy a fiftieth pair of shoes. Yes, we are supposed to feel sorry for her, at least when she owns up to her addiction at Shopaholics Anonymous (ex-Piston John Salley cameo, priceless).

She’s the type of American girl who was reared on Britney Spears videos and the myriad cultural products which try to permanently infantilize femininity; Like the examples of “modern women” we can find in recent films like He’s Just Not That Into You and The Women, she’s someone for whom adolescence will surely last into her 50s . She’s exactly the type of character that keeps capable, mature actresses like Melissa Leo and Viola Davis underemployed, the type of person I’d like to see Jerry Bruckenheimer’s usual explosive pyro-techniques used against. At some point in the proceedings, probably around the time Hugh Grant clone Hugh Dancy gives Rebecca’s sheer ignorance and competence a fourth or fifth pass, one really does wish for both to fall victim to a bridge bombing or subway explosion (unfortunately, she only takes cabs).

In the patently absurd, oddly disquieting world of director P.J. Hogan (My Best Friend’s Wedding) and producer Bruckheimer (responsible, of course, for countless big budget shitfests), “journalists” who write for relatively new monthly magazines with marginal distribution get big midtown offices and can afford to live with their more well endowed, engaged roommates in Lower East Side apartments, without help from a trust fund or rent control. Conde Nastesque publishing conglomerates are run by John Lithgow with a bizarre flippancy toward the bottom line that allows him to continue employing the Hugh Grant clone who steals Ms. Bloomwood’s heart and gives her opportunity after opportunity to fail and lie.

In Mr. Bruckheimer’s world, Anna Wintouresque fashion divas (the ones Rebecca really wants to work for, but clearly doesn’t have the chops to) have bizarrely fake French accents, go to scandal ridden young working class women’s homes to offer them work and look like Kristen Scott Thomas. In this world, poor people don’t exist. People don’t have to move to a cheaper zip code, or get unemployment (something most freelance journalist are strictly unable to do) or start buying food with their credit cards instead of Forzieri silk scarves.

In a world that is so overwhelming unsympathetic to the desires and concerns of most of its living inhabitants, perhaps some need entertainment like this, but that’s a world I’d consider in peril. Although its not quite the end of western civilization and probably won’t make your skin crawl much more than Hollywood’s most brazenly useless products, Confessions of a Shopaholic made me wonder just where the bottom really is.