London,

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People

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Cert: 15

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Dir: Robert Weide. Cast: Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Megan Fox, Max Minghella

 

Description: British writer Sidney Young is stunned when renowned American magazine editor Clayton Harding recruits him to join the ranks of celebrity bible Sharps. Abandoning London for the hustle and bustle of New York, Sidney quickly surmises that his finely honed sarcasm doesn't wash with the locals, not least department head Lawrence and fellow writer Alison. Trying to survive in the city that never sleeps, Sidney finds himself torn between feisty Alison and beautiful yet dim Sophie, whilst attempting not to fall flat on his face as he woos key figures in the film industry, including agent Eleanor Johnson.

Country: UK. 2008. 110mins

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Farcical take on How to Lose Friends

 

Not happy: Gillian Anderson stars in the film

Going Places: somehow Toby Young (Simon Pegg) has landed a job at Sharps magazine

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This disappointingly farcical adaptation of Toby Young’s book about gaining a staff job at Vanity Fair and then ruining his chance has Simon Pegg as the author and Kirsten Dunst as the fellow worker he fancies.

But Robert B Weide’s film alters the emphasis of the book considerably. Pegg plays Young as a celebrity journo who is so silly that you have no idea why the proprietor (Jeff Bridges) risks taking him on in the first place. The upside to this is the innate charm of the actor himself — a facet of character even Toby might not claim.
We see Young landing a job at Sharps magazine (clearly a clone of Vanity Fair) and arriving in New York in a red T-shirt with Young, Dumb and Full of Come emblazoned across it. Before that, he has tried to get into the Baftas accompanied by a pig, and presided over the hysterical death throes of the Modern Review, the magazine he co-founded, in an office above a London kebab shop.

We don’t, however, see his unfortunate period as my deputy at The Guardian, where he regularly undercut my comments with withering observations about the films I liked (by such as Terence Davies) and high praise for every dumb action movie I decried.  

Some of the film is very funny, especially the moment when he spots Orlando Bloom at a smart Fourth of June party and shouts: “You used to be English!” before drowning out the hired band with football chants. And there is one almost moving moment when the surrogate Young is faced in his dingy quarters in New York by his philosopher father (Bill Paterson), who quietly wonders whether he’s going about life the right way.

The rest, however, is largely dross, relying totally on Pegg’s prowess as a comedian and his ability to suggest a bounder with a mission to provoke but with a naïve desire to worm his way into the affections, or at least the consciousness, of ghastly celebrities and those who fawn on them.

The presence of Dunst, Bridges, Miriam Margolyes (as his permanently shocked landlady), Danny Hilton (as a lecherous executive) and Gillian Anderson (as a Devil Wears Prada-type bossy boots) would suggest we are going to have a better time than we actually do. But then the film’s ambitions are not high. It goes for easy laughs throughout. A few subtler ones — and there were a few in the book — have been hung out to dry.

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