How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (**)

Directed by: Robert B. Weide (Curb Your Enthusiasm)
Starring: Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox, Jeff Bridges, Danny Huston
Seen: December 21st 2008

** Out of ****

Sidney Young (Pegg) follows the world of glamour and celebrity closely, and reports on it / pokes fun at it in his own small alternative magazine, The Post Modern Review. He is British, and he doesn’t care. He’s about as pompous an ass as you’ll find, and the movie wastes no time in setting him up as an extremely ghastly person, he’s impolite, inconsiderate and selfish. So when Clayton Harding (Bridges) from Sharps magazine offers him a job it comes as quite a surprise. This is because Sharps is the opposite of his own Post Modern Review.

Before his first day he already tries to pick up a woman in a bar, masquerading a library card as his business card at Sharps. Alison Olsen (Dunst), catches on to him, and ruins his pick-up line, and he continues by pretty much ruining Alison’s evening. The next day, his first at work, he shows up in a T-shirt reading: “Young, Dumb and Full of Come”, thinking it would be funny. Clayton Harding, however, does not find this even remotely amusing, and throws the extra T-shirt Sydney had made for him out the window. And then introduces him to his supervisor, Alison.

The film continues to alienate Sydney to such a degree that no viewer can possibly find any reason to like him, from dumb interviews with little-known celebrities to arranging strippers for his boss on bring-your-daughter-to-work day, and a she-male stripper at that (shocking bit of the film, and the audience gets to see it all), to coughing up food on people in elevators and letting it go.

During his earlier years he was well known by bouncers for trying to sneak into celebrity parties, and thus found it extremely hard to get in. now that he works for Sharps, he walks through the front door like all the other celebrities, but continues to be an all-round unpleasant person. Until he hits rock bottom that is. He starts understanding what his behaviour is doing to his career and some people around him, his dad gives him a visit where he comes to a useful revelation about himself, and he falls in love with the ridiculously hot starlet Sophie Maes (Fox, who I would endure this film for again).

This brings around the inevitable redemption of Sydney Young, which, to me, came too late, and with too much of a Deus Ex Machina feel to it. His turnaround was too sudden, and the only thing it shows – as an afterthought – is that some people will give up their identity to become something in Hollywood. His turnaround alone does not seem to be enough however, as the writers continue to demonise not one, but two other characters to make him look better in comparison, Sydney’s sleazy boss Lawrence Maddox (Huston), and Alison. This is fully unsatisfying.

For this last paragraph, spoilers follow, so if you’re still interested in seeing the film without the ending known, stop reading. Things proceed to where Sydney has the opportunity to sleep with the object of his (and many men worldwide) desire, Sophie Maes. But he doesn’t. Instead he runs away and finds Alison, who was just ten minutes earlier made out to be a bit of a villain, and they “couple-up”, and the credits roll. Ridiculous.