'Going Shopping'
Scenes from a mall?

FOR THE WOMEN of Henry Jaglom's latest talky comedy, Going Shopping, shopping is more than a habit – it's a way of life. They try on attitudes, relationships, and emotional states as they would a pair of shoes; someone's always either laughing or crying but never for long. The shoestring plot revolves around Holly (Victoria Foyt), a sensitive, materialistic dame who runs her own boutique in upper-crust Los Angeles. When the store dips into the red, she finds herself needing to make ends meet while balancing delicate relationships with her mother and daughter. Jaglom punctuates the narrative with different women discussing the thrills and traumas of walking the aisle. Between the story's intergenerational babbling and the cutaway confessions, the film is as much about talking as it is shopping; at its most frantic, Going Shopping plays like a cracked-out, melodramatic version of something Woody Allen might have conceived of. The whole thing feels frivolous, and while that may be the point in a film about disposable pleasure, I'm not sure I'm buying. (Max Goldberg)