10:35am Friday 3rd October 2008
By Damon Smith
BASED on Toby Young's memoir, director Robert B Weide's debut narrative feature charts the misadventures of a British writer who unexpectedly finds himself at the centre of New York's social whirl.
At first, the scribe refuses to churn out sycophantic puff pieces but he soon sells his soul to the media devil, becoming the mirror reflection of the very fame-hungry zombies he used to lampoon with such venom.
Regrettably, screenwriter Peter Straughan files down all of the barbs in Young's confessional, shoehorning the characters into a generic romantic comedy, replete with outlandish set-pieces.
The death of a pet Chihuahua, which chases after a ball and leaps headfirst into a closed window, is a slapstick centre-piece, bookended by projectile vomiting and a brawl at an awards ceremony.
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People tries desperately to wring one chuckle out of nothing with a menagerie of characters who don't possess enough savvy to operate convincingly in the world of Hollywood glitz.
Simon Pegg is a most dislikable anti-hero.
He plays Sidney Young, snide editor of Post Modern Review, a sardonic rebuke to celebrity culture cobbled together by a ragtag staff from offices above a London kebab shop.
Writing primarily for his own amusement, Sidney is stunned when a renowned magazine editor (Jeff Bridges) offers him a correspondent's post on New York lifestyle bible Sharps.
Abandoning London for the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple, Sidney realises his finely-honed sarcasm doesn't wash with the locals, not least department head Lawrence Maddox (Danny Huston) or fellow writer Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst).
"Sidney's our very own idiot savant, without the savant," sneers Lawrence.
Public relations doyenne Eleanor Johnson (Gillian Anderson) is equally unimpressed, and wards him off her client, starlet Sophie Maes (Megan Fox).
Trying to survive in the city that never sleeps, Sidney is torn between feisty Alison and beautiful-yet-dim Sophie, while attempting to woo the great and good of an industry obsessed with physical perfection.
If you want to lose friends and alienate people then buy them a ticket to Weide's film.
Pegg grates from the very first smug grin, making Dunst's undernourished love interest seem even more adorable by comparison.
Bridges, Huston and company are wasted in thankless supporting roles, while Fox purrs and pouts in a succession of slinky outfits.
When Alison angrily defends her colleague - "Sidney Young has more going for him than anybody in this place!" - we're tempted to give the film its first and only laugh: of derision.
It's preposterous that an intelligent and talented woman like Alison could fall for such an irredeemable buffoon, who mocks his father (Bill Paterson): "You thought Brad Pitt was a cave in Yorkshire!"
We thought How to Lose Friends and Alienate People was a comedy. Who's the bigger fool?
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