Friday
03Oct2008
Movie Review - 'How to Lose Friends and Alienate People'
Friday, October 3, 2008 at 12:21AM How to Lose Friends and Alienate PeopleStarring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges, and Megan Fox
Directed by Robert B. Weide
Rated R
Toby Young has led an interesting life, and one chapter
of it became the memoir
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. The
book chronicled the British journalist’s failed attempt to become a successful
Vanity Fair writer.
Unfortunately, Young’s experiences - at least as portrayed in the movie version
of his book - are just like The Devil Wears Prada and Ugly Betty:
Sore thumb goes to work for a magazine, is overwhelmed, makes mistakes and
performs pratfalls, and eventually adjusts to the new climate better than anyone
ever expected.
The only saving grace for How to Lose Friends, therefore, would be if it’s
absolutely hysterical. And it’s not. Though it casts
Simon Pegg
as the fictionalized Sidney Young and leans on the seen-it-all skill of
Jeff Bridges
from time to time, How to Lose Friends just isn’t that funny.
We’ve watched this format unfold before but there’s no real crime in presenting
it again because filmmakers tend to follow formulas that have worked in the
past. However, on top of a predictable plot, we’re also seeing characters we’ve
seen in the past, jokes that we didn’t laugh at in other movies, and a pretty
sizable waste of talent.
Reader Comments (1)
but I think the movie may yield a pause and toss for lady Fox.