I like to read light, frothy books between heavy, serious books, and so a couple of weeks ago, I treated myself to Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic as a reward for completing part 2 of Anna Karenina.
It was fun. Rebecca Bloomwood is definitely cut from the same chick-lit cloth as Bridget Jones, from her quirky, sweet hapless self-deception to her attractive doing-the-right thing when the chips are down. And I felt the shades of Pemberley and P&P in that she is initially adamantly prejudiced towards hero Luke Brandon, who turns out to be a wonderfully sexy knight-in-Savile Row, just like Mark Darcy. The icing on the cake is that the story takes place in London, and I enjoyed hearing about Rebecca shopping at Harrods, etc.
Then I rented the movie. My daughter warned me that Rebecca was an American in Manhattan, and I swallowed hard but decided that I would give up London in order to see the film version of this cute, funny story. But the script writers did not tell Kinsella's story, and they completely alienated me when they resorted to coincidence--in their version, Luke gives Rebecca the money she needs for the scarf when he meets her for the first time at a hot dog stand, and then it turns out that he is the hiring manager in the job she has to get. In the book, they had known each other for some time and she was already completely hardened towards him when he loaned her the money. He was her nemesis throughout, only redeeming himself near the end, but with plenty of hints that he found Rebecca mighty appealing...just as she was. I didn't even watch the whole thing, but abandoned it when Rebecca is fighting a bunch of other stereotypes over bargain Gucci boots. Puhlease!
It escapes me why Hollywood pays good money for the screenrights to a successful novel and then pays more money to rewrite the story into the same ho-hum storyline that has been done a thousand times. Are they just buying the rights to the title? Seems like it. All right, all right. I'm not saying that the P&P storyline hasn't been done a thousand plus times, but it works! Why mess with a proven formula for a trite, silly one? Even fluff needs to hold up under the lights.
Yesterday, I finished part 3 of Anna Karenina. I hope to be able to post soon on it as well as this week's froth, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict...which I am loving!
