How To Lose Friends and Alienate People - on DVD

OK this is one I missed in theatres and was really looking forward to Simon Pegg having a bigger movie where he’s the lead role than the DTV stuff and minor roles he’s gotten since the success of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The previews made it look like The Devil Wears Prada for guys, which it essentially was. The short version, see it if you’re a fan of someone in it, if not you aren’t missing much. Story goes an idealistic young independent newspaper editor is called out of the blue by the editor in chief of a large New York magazine and offered a job. He accepts immediately and goes to New York with visions of fame and starlets in his head. Of course if everything worked out properly there wouldn’t be a movie, right? So lets just all assume that we all figure hilarity ensues, capiche?

So the flick would probably have been dead in the water save for the cast. Simon Pegg gets by with pure charisma and Megan Fox get by on pure hotness, although she isn’t given much to do in the film. Jeff Bridges also works out well as the formerly idealistic editor who has made it to the top. He explains at one point that he used to be like Pegg’s Sidney Young, idealistic and raging against the machine because he wasn’t “invited to the party”. Now that he was at the party he needs to chill out with the idealism and attacking the egotistical celebrities and play along. So there was good message in the flick at some point but it was apparently lost in the translation or rewrites or whatever happened to turn this from something that someone thought enough of to throw a bunch of money at it to put it in theatres to be seen by millions… and it wasn’t because it was a mix of slapstick, smart humor, and romcom, it kinda didn’t know what it wanted to be or where it wanted to go. So a tacked on Hollywood-ed ending later this is the version we got in theatres and again its an “eh“ type of film. Oh yeah Kirsten Dunst was in it, as the secondary, first love interest. She was adequate as well. So yeah I guess that’s the best thing I can say it was a movie, entertaining at times, existing at others.

Till next time guys.