Going Shopping

There's just enough neurotic or sharp badinage and Rodeo Drive realism to make it all go down easy.

Going Shopping is sharp and funny about all the things that shopping can mean to the women who live to do it, and even to those who don't.

As in many of his films, Jaglom establishes a striking intimate rapport with his female subjects, and as the funny and bitter revelations pour forth, an activity that many men may view as something done strictly out of necessity takes on unforeseen narcotic, romantic and therapeutic dimensions.

Going Shopping, like Mr. Jaglom's other movies, has enough smart, knowing touches and enough easy spontaneity among its well-chosen actors to make you wish it added up to more than what it turns out to be: a flighty, motor-mouthed cinematic divertissement.

Every scene ends with a gag line, punched up by Jaglom's harried intercutting, and threaded through the story are close-ups of women discussing their obsession with new clothes, an exercise that yields its wisdom in the first 20 minutes and then keeps repeating it.

Item may draw curious women looking to cool their heels, say, while out shopping, but straight men can be expected to stay away in droves and Jaglom regulars will probably wait for the DVD.

Henry Jaglom's latest study of contemporary female obsessions among a noxious clan of West L.A. bourgeoisie is of more pathological than cinematic interest.