Movie: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Thursday, October 9, 2008

There are plenty of good journalism movies out there. Movies about the profession that have something important to say about it. Broadcast News, The Paper, All the President’s Men and Almost Famous are movies that could go into the pantheon of films about reporters.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, a shallow romantic comedy about one man’s adventures in entertainment reporting, is definitely a movie that will not be included in this hallowed group. Much of it has to do with a viewer’s opinion of entertainment aka gossip news. If you find it fascinating and pertinent, chances are this could be just the film for you. If you find the lives of the rich and famous to be a flashy, glossy and ultimately hollow casing, you’ll probably walk away disappointed.

The movie plays like a male version of The Devil Wears Prada. Simon Pegg plays aspiring celebrity journalist Sidney Young, who goes from running a dwindling independent magazine in London to the bottom of the heap at Sharps, a highly respected New York-based operation. Sidney bumbles his way from obscurity to a position of power while trying miserably to make it with a hot young starlet (Megan Fox) and while getting a little prodding in the right direction from a fellow reporter played by Kirsten Dunst.

Overall, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is pretty forgettable. It banks on strong performances from Pegg, Dunst and Jeff Bridges, who do their best with the generic material they’ve been given. The movie is as shallow and silly as an issue of Us Weekly, and just as easily tossed aside.

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