Fear102's Rating and Review:

Directed by: Philip Charles MacKenzie
Cast: Nestor Carbonell, Kathy Najimy, Michael Lerner, Luke Perry, Martin Mull and Cara Buono
USA, 1999, 92 minutes

     "Attention Shoppers" seems like a movie that could have been done as a final project for a UCLA film student. It has all the elements. It obviously had a budget of a couple thousand dollars, it stars some people whom you recognize but who obviously aren't too busy, and of course the story is somehow film industry related.

The movie stars the Latin guy Nestor Corbonell. He pushes the bounds of the acting craft by playing the part of a latino actor on a sitcom whose name no one can remember. The sitcom's name is, sit down for this one, "Three Guys, Three Girls and a Cuban". Yes children, somewhere in Hollywood a production meeting took place in which they needed to come up with a fictitious name for a sitcom and this is the best they came up with. I don't know what is more insulting, the fact that they came up with this name for their fictitious sitcom, or the fact that this may have been a good name because it actually seems realistic that a TV studio would put a show with a name this bad on the air.

     Anyhow, our hero has a brief encounter on an airplane with Luke Perry who plays of all things, a much larger TV star with an enormous ego. Everyone is expanding into new roles in this one. His plane ride takes him to Houston where he is to help open a new K-Mart by signing autographs. Instead of the raucous crowd he was promised he is met by only a trickle of eccentric fans with various reasons for showing up at the K-Mart that day. We meet some other minor characters along the way, including the manager who is easily the best acted role in the movie, and Kathy Najimy. Najimy of course plays the fat chick on "Veronica's Closet" and the voice for Peggy Hill. Here she plays one of those insipid Morning Zoo DJ types which is a perfect role for her because this girl definitely has a face that was meant for radio.

     The movie feels like a slightly more polished version of "Clerks". It tries to have a couple storylines but they are so shallow they aren't really important. Despite that I guess I kind of enjoyed this film. I enjoyed in on the same level I enjoyed "Bringing Out the Dead". I didn't really care too much about the story or what would happen, I just kind of liked watching the characters. Every character was a loser for one reason or another but none of them were really bad people