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# ‘Shopgirl’ scores good performances, but bad score
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/do-rae-me-theron-stirs-pot/
- Published: 2005-10-21T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T08:01:15.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

Steve Martin impresses as both star and scripter of this adaptation of his wry, dysthymic 2000 novella, but director Anand Tucker (“Hilary and Jackie”) makes a few dubious choices that gum up what otherwise might have been this year’s equivalent of “Lost in Translation.” Perhaps foremost among the foibles that blunt “Shopgirl” is Barrington Pheloung’s militantly rapturous score, which swells up and intrudes upon practically every scene in the movie with all the subtlety of a hound dog baying in a library. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in repeatedly trying to convey a range of emotions through blaring music rather relying a bit more on, say, the actors and their actions, Tucker and his musical director instead deliver something that borders on parody. Thankfully, Martin and his co-stars, Clare Danes and Jason Schwartzman, give it their all and in the process nearly redeem the sins of the production team.

Mirabelle (Danes) is sweet girl from Vermont who moved to Los Angeles to find success (she’s an artist), but instead finds herself trapped in lonely isolation, working a dead-end job behind the glove counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. Mirabelle is Bohemian enough to ensure her work will be hanging in a gallery by film’s end (it always happens that way, doesn’t it?), but not so outré that she doesn’t long for traditional romance. Two suitors enter the picture almost simultaneously, though neither of them can fully provide what she’s after. First up is Jeremy (Schwartzman), an inarticulate, impoverished would-be music mogul whose idea of a great first date is to sit at an outdoor mall and stare at the neon lights. Ray Porter (Martin) is Jeremy’s antithesis, a wealthy entrepreneur who will spare no expense to woo Mirabelle, despite a professed aversion to maintaining a long-term relationship with her. Martin and Schwartzman inhabit their roles quite convincingly, but Danes is the film’s center, and a luminous one at that.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 21, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/102105.pdf?ref=smdp.com)