Steve Martin Wrote Shopgirl (So Phil in Marketing Didn’t Have To)


Tucker, 2005

I wonder how many people in Hollywood go home at night, look in their bathroom mirrors, and cry into their sinks because they’ve shamelessly lied to Steve Martin’s face. Probably just as many as the publishing execs in New York who drooled all over his book deal. But…I guess that’s just the way it works. The entertainment industry exists to make money, and a name as respected as Martin’s is bound to garner a lot of cash for whatever it’s attached to.


Boring.

However, people, Shopgirl is as terrible a movie as it is a novella. While you’re watching it, you can just imagine the simpering ass-kissers with dollar-sign eyes edge closer to Steve.

“Mr. Martin, this book is a fantastic portrayal of today’s complex relationships.”

“The movie will really speak to young women struggling to discover their identity in a world where men are just so darn confusing!”

“Hey Steve! I had to look away so many times during the course of this movie in awkward disgust that I’m not sure I actually WATCHED the film so much as cringed into the back of my boyfriend’s couch for an hour and a half.”


Boringer.

Well, that last one was me, but you get the drift. Clearly nobody had the nerve to look the legendary comedian in the eye and bellow “STICK TO COMEDY, OLD MAN.” That would have been just what the doctor ordered. Somebody to break it to Martin that he’s about as deep and artsy as my high school theater director.*


My brain just died.

Not convinced? Still hanging onto that whole “this guy was The Jerk” thing? Let’s see if this one last list of inexcusable stuff about this movie convinces you to immediately remove it from your queue:

  1. Slow motion at inappropriate times (as if there are ever appropriate times, unless that time is 1983).
  2. Ridiculously heavy score.
  3. “Romantic” scenes like the one in which rich silver fox Martin removes dowdy old Claire Danes’s wristwatch, encircles her wrist with his fingers and says “Now I’m your watch.” What?
  4. Hopelessly outdated “Girls define themselves through their relationships” theme.
  5. Painfully out of place narration by Martin himself, telling us things we already know, such as why Mirabelle (Danes) is so flingin flangin blue all the time!
  6. And, an issue many movies run into, little to no shirtless Johnny Depp scenes.


    7. You will find little to none of this scene.

*She always wore jumpers and named her baby Maximilian.

Posted in Independent

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