Shopgirl

Steve Martin makes his personal dysfunctional romantic proclivities the subject of a brittle romantic comedy that affords painfully little romance or humor. Transferred to the big screen from Martin's novella of the same name, "Shopgirl" exposes the author's permanent state of mid-life crisis as he makes a production of seducing a girl some 25 or 30 years his junior just because he can. Claire Danes drives the film, in a blank role thankfully not played by blank-it-girl Selma Blair ("The Fog"). Mirabelle (Danes) is a self-described "poor judge of character" who does charcoal art in her drab and lonely Los Angeles apartment when she isn't working a soul-crushing day job as a counter girl in the glove department of Saks Fifth Avenue. Jason Schwartzman plays Mirabelle's slacker suitor Jeremy who learns the film's thesis that money changes everything after going on the road with a rock band as an unintended self-help sabbatical.
Rated R. 116 mins. (D+) (One Star)