Even before the opening credits of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People are complete, a pig (yes, an actual pig, as in Babe) has wrecked holy hell on a Hollywood insider party. Its piggly shenanigans include trashing a hotel room, making waiters fall into the pool and causing all the celebs to spill food on their expensive clothes. The sequence ends with a close-up of Simon Pegg leaping into the air with a wacky look on his face.
Yeah, it's that kind of movie. And a couple of others, too.
The main problem - and oh, there are many - with How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, based on the memoirs of English journalist Toby Young, is that we, as the audience, are asked to do the impossible. Over the course of almost two hours, we're asked to 1) root for a complete and total jackass, 2) buy it when he's suddenly revealed to only be half a jackass, and finally 3) accept that a woman as intelligent and attractive as Kirsten Dunst would fall for this half-jackass after spending the entire movie either being enraged at him or at least rolling her eyes at his obnoxiousness. With a title like How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, at least the movie has a sad sense of self-awareness about its own doomed-to-fail premise.
Simon Pegg (looking a bit lost without Nick Frost, actually) plays Sidney Young, a British journalist who dreams of the glamorous lifestyle of a respected entertainment journalist, with access to all of the exclusive clubs, parties and pants. His latest stunt gets the attention of New York uber-publisher Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), who invites him to the Big Apple to write for his own lifestyle magazine. Sidney accepts, and soon he's... well, alienating everyone with his abrasive personality and (frustratingly unrealistic) cluelessness on how to behave on planet Earth. He lusts for the latest Hollywood Hot Young Thing (Megan Fox) and learns to kiss Hollywood Ass, somehow climbing in the ranks of the magazine before realizing that the party's not worth it when you can have a quiet life with the cute copywriter who's writing a novel on the side (Dunst).
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is a schizo-gonzo mess; it has absolutely no identity of its own, as director Robert Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm) shifts the film's tone and style seemingly ever 10 minutes or so, though he's certainly not helped by a wildly uneven screenplay. Sometimes we're in a self-congratulatory Hollywood insider comedy disguised as "scathing satire," then we're in an alternate slapstick universe where pigs trash celebrity parties and large objects squash poodles, then we're in something resembling a sincere romantic comedy where the boy and girl dance to the soundtrack of La Dolce Vita (on vinyl, no less). The film quietly barks rather than bites at the hand that feeds it; its attacks on Hollywood-types are weak and half-hearted, not to mention unimaginative - the twentysomething starlet (Fox) is stupid, the hot twentysomething director (Max Minghella) is always stand-offish, dressed in black and never seen without his sunglasses, the power agent (Gillian Anderson) is a mega-bitch. It's as if the movie itself wants the same thing Simon Young wants - to be accepted by the Hollywood elite - and is careful to not piss anyone off too much.
Despite being such a mess, the film has its bright spots. Jeff Bridges can make any movie watchable just by standing there and glaring, which is basically all he does as Sidney's boss. Kirsten Dunst plays the one person that resembles a human being, even though her "real world" character is bogged down by cliches as well - still, it's nice to see her doing something other than being kidnapped by Spider-Man's latest nemesis. You feel bad for her during the times that Weide tries to lure her into the film's cartoony fantasy world when he makes her do stuff like get drunk, throw up and snore loudly.
It's enraging when a film like this struts around thinking it's clever but actually has absolutely nothing to say. It's even more frustrating when the entertainment industry thinks it's fascinating in its self-contradictions and interesting enough to be worthy of its own movie about itself. Movies about movies and star vehicles about stars have been attempted many times and have only rarely succeeded; How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is just another Hollywood failure.
Ratings:
Directing: D
Writing: D
Performances: C+
Visual Appeal: C
Overall: D
Vitals:
Release Date: October 3, 2008
Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Cast: Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Megan Fox, Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Miriam Margolyes, Max Minghella, Thandie Newton
Director: Robert B. Weide
Writers: Peter Straughan (screenplay); Toby Young (book)
Genre: Comedy
MPAA Rating: R (language, some graphic nudity and brief drug material)
