`SHOPPING' IS JUST THE RIGHT SIZE FOR RETAIL AFICIONADOS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

LIKE WRITER-DIRECTOR Henry Jaglom's ``Eating'' and ``Babyfever,'' ``Going Shopping'' encourages women to obsess about a subject near and dear to their hearts in comic but, hopefully, deeply revealing ways.

And like those films, this one's good at touching on all of the key issues involved but doesn't really dig deep enough to get to anything disturbingly insightful or uproariously observant. It ain't dumb and is honest as far as it goes. But ``Shopping'' might have been more effective had it been a more compulsive, less pop-psych kind of spree.

Although it relies on Jaglom's usual, funny-if-kinda-demeaning device of women revealing their most neurotic feelings directly to the camera, the story that he and wife/star Victoria Foyt have come up with here is one of the independent filmmaker's better ones.

Foyt's Holly G. runs a boutique on Santa Monica's upscale Montana Avenue. She mostly sells her own pricey clothing line to a loyal clientele. One particular Mother's Day weekend, though, a perfect storm of problems threatens to put her out of business.

Holly's dissembling boyfriend Adam (Bruce Davison) has mismanaged her finances to the point where she's about to lose her lease. Her wacky mom Winnie (Lee Grant) has not only just moved in with a philandering, mobbed-up sleazeball, she reveals that she's been a serial shoplifter since Holly was a girl. Holly's own daughter Coco (Mae Whitman) is entering the first stages of bad-partner choosing. And an interested younger man, Rob Morrow's Miles, has Holly wondering if she should respond to his advances or wait until his current girlfriend buys something.

Through it all, women exult about the rush of spending, the bittersweet decision process (``I can go in a fitting room feeling good and come out needing therapy'' is the best of many semi-trenchant self-observations) and the devastation of monthly credit card statements. Naturally, there is no reason for any man on Earth to be interested in any of this.

The movie is at its most powerful when it focuses on the economic aspects of the retail-driven life. Jaglom has a tendency to turn everything else into a joke, or bring it to an unearned feel-good result. Still, the main actors here are charming and for the most part credible, and the film covers a lot of thematic ground, not all of it superficially.

``Going Shopping'' isn't the biggest bargain in the world, girls. But if this sounds like your type of thing, you'll probably get your money's worth.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

GOING SHOPPING - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: language)

Starring: Victoria Foyt, Lee Grant, Rob Morrow, Bruce Davison, Mae Whitman.

Director: Henry Jaglom.

Running time: 1 hr. 46 min.

Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Laemmle Monica, Santa Monica; Edwards University Town Center 6, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Amusing look at why women buy has some insight.