For Father's Day, I was invited to watch the latest "chick flick" with my wife and daughter. While I was quietly amused by "Confessions of a Shopaholic" (Touchstone Home Entertainment, rated PG, DVD $29.99, Blu-ray Disc $39.99), I think they reacted to it more like I do watching Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend."

Isla Fisher of "Wedding Crashers" stars and provides some intermittent comic voice-overs, a la Sarah Jessica Parker in "Sex and the City," as this adorable New York daughter named Rebecca. She suddenly loses her job and wakes up to the fact that she has been dressing wa-a-a-ay beyond her means.

No more credit cards for Becky -- and, as for work, forget that plum position with an upscale fashion magazine. For now, better settle on writing for some stuffy old financial rag, dispensing economic advice in a voice that other recovering spendthrifts can relate to.

Taken from a series of best-selling tell-alls by Sophie Kinsella, "Confessions of a Shopaholic" shares the whimsical air and eclectic fashion sense of "Sex and the City," but thankfully, none of its objectionable promiscuity. There's a spot of unlikely romance with Rebecca's sensitive Brit employer (Hugh Dancy), and eventually there's a lesson to be learned about a life beyond Madison Avenue. The DVD comes fully "accessorized" with music videos, bloopers and deleted scenes.

"Confessions of a Shopaholic" is "Citizen Kane" compared to another new chick flick out there titled "Spring Breakdown" (Warner Home Video, rated R, DVD $27.95; Blu-ray Disc $35.99).

Some of the current "Saturday Night Live" crew are behind this over-the-top loser comedy, including stars Amy Poehler and Rachel Dratch. Together with indie screen actress Parker Posey, the comics play longtime girlfriends who decide to go on a late-life spring break get-away to find romance and keep an eye on a Texas politician's party-age daughter.

We never for an instant believe these three are the outcast geeks they proclaim themselves to be, and the broad lampooning of conservative politicians, fundamentalist Christians, beauty queens, "crackers," gun owners and "anti-immigration" groups comes off as close-minded elitism at its nasty worst. Only the music keeps insisting that any of this is funny, becoming the audio equivalent of a laugh track.

Airing on the side of caution

Also in the mail this week were screeners for two new youth comedies making their broadcast bows before arriving on DVD.

The Nickelodeon Original TV movie "Mr. Troop Mom" debuted June 19 on the popular kids' cable station, and arrives June 23 on video as a Warner Premiere title (Warner Home Video, rated G, DVD $27.95; Blu-ray Disc $35.99). Personable comic George Lopez produced and stars as a workaholic lawyer guilt-tripped into chaperoning his young daughter on a girls' camp weekend.

You probably have to be under 10 or so to find any of what happens here fresh or surprising. The campers suffer all the expected put-downs by the "popular" girls, and the female counselors and moms tend to be overbearing in every way necessary to make life uncomfortable for the laid-back comedian. It ends with a "Survivor"-style contest, a concert by the Naked Brothers Band, and a flurry of personality changes.

The other newcomer is the Disney Channel Original Movie "Princess Protection Program" (Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, rated TV-G, $29.99). It premieres June 26 on cable and arrives on DVD shelves June 30.

Two of the latest Disney discoveries star in this fable about an endangered princess from a small Latin kingdom finding shelter in the Louisiana home of an all-American high school girl. Naturally, the two have much to learn from one another.

Selena Gomez possesses real star appeal as the American daughter, though for me Demi Lovato falls heavily into the cloying category of "young professional Disney actress." Again, nothing about the script contains a modicum of originality, and it centers on yet another cadre of bullying "popular" girls. This one's strictly fodder for under-age fans trying to wipe out all memory of their latest homework assignment.

Young readers of the best-selling "Goosebumps" books by R. L. Stine helped turn a well-made series of cable-TV dramatizations into a niche youth hit in the 1990s. Two fresh collections of those half-hour shows are now out on DVD. "Goosebumps: Return of the Mummy" (20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment, not rated, $14.98) is typical of the fine line the franchise treads between scaring young ones and not offending their parents.

Here a boy and his sister are helping their archaeologist uncle inside an unexplored pyramid when they meet up with the original 4,000-year-old "wrapper." In other episodes, some school kids receive a mummy by UPS while another group encounters a "mud monster" in a nearby swamp.

Another trio of shows are offered in "Goosebumps: The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight," a similar package of stock characters getting their comeuppance in semi-facetious encounters with the supernatural.

Also new and notable

*"Morning Light" (Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, rated PG, DVD $29.99; Blu-ray Disc $39.99). Walt Disney's younger brother Roy sponsored a team of student sailors in the 2007 Transpacific Yacht Race from California to Diamond Head. That endeavor is captured in this ESPN-style documentary about perseverance and character-building aboard the 52-foot racing sloop Morning Light. The pretty cinematography manages to hold one's attention as the not-so-interesting crew members hunker down for a long and not-too-exciting race. One young sailor sums up the race with, "It's a long distance and a lot goes on." Couldn't have said it better myself.

*"Tokyo!" (Liberation Entertainment, not rated, DVD $24.95; Blu-ray Disc $34.95). Do you like your cinema entertainment daring and new, maybe even edging on the off-putting? Here's a stylish and freewheeling trilogy of short works set in modern Tokyo that is as professional a group of experimental films as you'll ever come across. Three accomplished directors examine possible ways of dealing with contemporary society: withdraw from it, transform oneself to adapt to it, or confront its strangeness and try to make friends. In Michel Gondry's "Interior Design," a young couple moves to the big city, unaware of the existential transformations it will demand. Leos Carax's "Merde" finds a crazed, sewer-dwelling misfit becoming a Godzilla surrogate to an alienated Japanese populace. And in "Shaking Tokyo," my favorite of the three, the Korean director of "The Host," Bong Joon-Ho, tells the odd tale of a devout shut-in who must venture out of his apartment for the first time in a decade to contact the woman he loves. The DVD, which streets June 30, includes interviews and behind-the-scenes extras for a very collectible package.

user comments (0)