Australian Isla Fisher, 33, is now appearing in her first lead role in a major Hollywood film. The romantic comedy, "Confessions of a Shopaholic," was released in the United States on Friday.

Based on Sophie Kinsella’s bestselling series of chick-lit books, the film stars Isla Fisher as Rebecca Bloomwood, a financial journalist and retail addict who shops her way into some serious credit card debt. She’s hopelessly in love with designer clothes and shoes; for her, buying is something she was practically born with.

She desperately wants to work for the fashion rag, Alette magazine, run by the semi-satanic Alette Naylor (Kristin Scott Thomas). An opening has arisen at a sister mag, a personal-finance journal edited by the dashing and secretly wealthy Luke Brandon (Hugh Dancy), and Rebecca lands the job. It goes without saying that she also wins the heart of her dashing and saintly editor (Dancy). She misses deadlines to attend a sale, acts like an imbecile at staff meetings and lies incessantly, but he is beyond patient and accommodating. Dancy does his level best in a thankless role.

However a ridiculously caricatured debt collector (Robert Stanton) appears as Rebecca's nemesis, plaguing her with phone calls and showing up at her home and workplace. But let’s be more tolerant and let the debt collector be.

Fisher even helps us forgive the awkwardly tacked-on presence of her parents (John Goodman and Joan Cusack) and the strained running gag about her purported proficiency in speaking Finnish, because just when your eyeballs start rolling up in your head, Rebecca's killer heels will suddenly betray her on a slippery office floor, or she'll triumphantly crack a last-resort credit card out of a block of ice in the fridge, or set her shopaholics therapy group swooning with a dreamy-eyed evocation of "the sheen of silk, draped across a mannequin."

After 15 years of acting in serious roles in two Australian soap operas, smaller parts in British and American television and movies, and one German horror film, she could be considered to be a revelation. Although this is a role you would imagine might be filled, with pink charm, by Kate Hudson or Sandra Bullock. But Fisher has her own very personal adorable magnetism, with eyes that widen like a naughty child's and a smile so vivacious it could light up the next three rooms.

Though it tries mightily to live up to its cute title and premise with soft laughs and sticky predicaments, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” largely registers as a classic story of female self-improvement. Everything you think might happen actually does.

Despite its top-quality cast, a bankable director (P.J. Hogan) and enticing source material (the Sophie Kinsella best-sellers), the end product is surprisingly seen-that-done that; "Devil Wears Prada"/"Bridget Jones"/"Sex and the City" are by far much better representations of the whole female consumerism idea.