True to its word.
Director: Rober B. Weide
Notable Cast: Simon Pegg, Megan Fox, Gillian Anderson, Jeff Bridges, Kirsten Dunst, Danny Huston
Simultaneously cynical and idealistic How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is pretentious enough to annoy just about everyone. The movie is chock-full of unsavory characters and general criticisms of entertainment journalism. While some of the interactions and observations ring true it does not make the film any less frustrating.
Simon Pegg’s Sidney Young, an elitist entertainment journalist hired to write for a magazine that he feels is below him, is the type of unflinchingly set-in-his-ways character that typically leads to a well structured non-arc story in which the lead never learns anything. Maddening as narratives may be, such stories usually spark strong performances and strong feelings either for or against the steadfast protagonist.
However when literature is translated to celluloid much of that realistic angst is lost to Hollywood conventions. Insert Kirsten Dunst as (what else?) the winsome pixie dream girl. Pity-poor Alison Olsen, Sidney’s put-upon co-worker and only semblance of a friend at Sharp’s magazine, as she falls for the presumably unlovable Sidney. Further still, pity Dunst for thanklessly taking relatively appealing parts in such terrible fare. It is little wonder that critics find her bland as she constantly finds herself in drab surroundings.
Make no mistake, she is the bright spot in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, but that is not saying much as even her character mostly disagreeable qualities. Because the film is a romantic comedy instead of a drama it is dictated that the audience should want Sidney and Alison to end up together. That assumed audience desire is more perfunctory than actually built upon in any reasonable way.
The uniting of the two symbolizes an enormous compromise of both of their characters; something that seems impossible from the onset. It is more realistic to believe that Sidney would forget about his journalistic integrity in order to knock boots with sex kitten Sophie Maes (Megan Fox). In fact, the opening scene implies that this will come to pass, but anyone who knows the cast of the film should not be fooled.
More the pity since a movie embracing its brashly offensive protagonist would have been much more interesting. The problem is that, like most crappy movies, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People wants it both ways. The filmmakers want to exploit Sidney’s ability to hate while giving viewers something to feel warm and fuzzy about.
Not having read the book, I can only surmise how much has made it from the page to the screen. But I would be willing to bet that Toby Young’s memoir does not shift gears mid-film to become a sappy romance rather than a “scathing” commentary on the entertainment industry and those who choose to write about it. It is difficult to choose which half is worse so to be fair I will say they are both equally bad. Consider this friend lost and alienated. Congratulations.
