The 2008 film How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is loosely based on the autobiographical writings of Toby Young. His book of the same name covers Toby’s five year struggle to make it in America as a contributing editor of Vanity Fair. For the film tha magazine has been changed to Sharps Magazine and a few other liberties have been taken to turn it into a rom-com.
Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) is an independent journalist running his own magazine, largely dedicated to reporting celebrity scandals. He sees himself as a maverick, a journalist who tells it how it is and doesn’t suck up to anyone. With his magazine on the brink of collapse, and his latest escape to infiltrate the glitzy celebrity empire, not only thwarted, but ending in complete disaster, Sidney, amazingly, is offered a job in New York working for the biggest celebrity magazine of them all. Sharps magazine.
Now Sidney doesn’t see his taking the job as selling out. No, he’s going to bring his own uncompromising style to this sell-out of a magazine and shake things up a bit. The editor of Sharps, Clayton Harding Jeff Bridges) is a bit of a hero of Sidney’s. Early in his career he ran a magazine that pulled no punches. It was this that inspired Sidney to set up his own publication and he thinks that he can inspire Clayton back to his old rebellious ways.
After being head-hunted by Clayton, Sidney thinks he’s made it, that he’s the big man in town. In his first meeting with Clayton he finds out that he’s sadly mistaken. He ignores the advice to be nice to people and give them the coverage they want and instead continues his attack on celebrity in general (whilst secretly wanting to be a celebrity himself). In particular he decides to attack the clients of the very powerful publicist Eleanor Johnson (Gillian Anderson) and in the process manages to insult his boss. His only friend is co-worker Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst), who seems to have amazing tolerance as Sidney is by no means nice to her either. Also bizarrely, a young rising star of an actress, Sophie Maes (Megan Fox), takes a shine to Sidney, and it’s this relationship that is the only thing keeping him in a job. Will Sidney compromise his principles and suck up to celebrity to become a celebrity himself? Will he get anywhere with Sophie Maes, who he is a little bit besotted with? You’ll just have to watch it to find out.
I’ll admit that I’m a fan of Simon Pegg’s previous film works. Thankfully with this he left the zom-rom-com and just stuck to rom-com (I don’t know that you can add any more to zom-rom-com, but if anyone can then Pegg can!). The original material wasn’t a rom-com so some license has been taken here and unfortunately it shows. Having not read the original material I don’t know if it’s the way the Sidney Young character was written, or whether it’s the way Pegg plays him, but he comes across as a brash, arrogant pillock (note to self, must start to use the word pillock more). It’s difficult to side with him in the early parts of the film, and you certainly can’t see why Alison or Sophie would give him the time of day, never mind be romantically attracted to him. For me, if that’s the way the character was originally written, then in introducing a romantic element to the story, they ought to have changed the character a little, to make him a bit more likeable. Don’t get me wrong, the boy comes good eventually and there’s a happy ending, it just takes too long for the nicer side of Sidney to come across.
As a comedy, there do be laughs here. There’s a nice mix of dialogue driven and slapstick comedy that Pegg handles with his usual aplomb. Kirsten Dunst doesn’t have to deliver too much comedy-wise, that all comes from Pegg, but she puts in an excellent performance as a realistic love interest. I can also say that having seen this film, I now understand what all the fuss is about with Megan Fox. From Transformers it was evident that she’s an attractive girl, but I didn’t see why everyone (most men at least) were going nuts about her. Here she puts in a great performance as the up and coming actress. She portrays elements of innocence, whilst also hinting at the true scheming behind her actions and is pretty easy on the eye whilst doing it (hope my wife doesn’t read this!).
As a film I found How to Lose Friends and Alienate People an entertaining 1hr 50min worth of viewing. It seems that It pretty much bombed at the cinema grossing a total cinematic take of $16 million and I don’t quite know why, it certainly isn’t that bad. It does have some issues and a couple of cringe worthy moments, but overall it’s a funny, entertaining story with a nice happy ending (I’m a sucker for a happy ending). If you're a lover of a good rom-com then worth checking out.
Click here to buy How To Lost Friends and Alienate People from Amazon.