Uproarious Friends Ultimately Alienates
Journalist Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) has come to America and he wants to take it by storm. Unexpectedly hired by powerful publishing magnet Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges) to work for one of his New York publications, he wants to strip the curtain away from celebrity and reveal it for the facetious career it is. He’s uncouth, unethical and unafraid to make people loathe him, sure his behavior will be forgiven just as soon as everyone reading his articles realizes just how brilliant he truly is.
Jeff Bridges and Simon Pegg in MGM's How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
The problem is, people like his intelligent and hardworking coworker Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) just think he’s a jerk, a character assessment of which many concur especially after Sidney starts lusting after new starlet Sophie Maes (Megan Fox). But when the actress’ powerful publicist Eleanor Johnson (Gillian Anderson) offers exclusive access to the sexy it-girl just as long as he leaves his iron-clad journalist ethics at home the uncouth Brit’s crisis of conscious suddenly takes center stage, his wildly inapprorpiate behavior an almost immediate thing of the past.
Based on Toby Young’s acclaimed 2001 memoir, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is a foul-mouthed and risqué comedic satire that for two full acts had me laughing fairly consistently. While it didn’t always connect, so many of the punches it landed were so uproarious and unpredictable it was impossible not to be impressed. Sure it’s got it’s moments of incredulous offensiveness (and a couple moments of shocking transphobia almost beyond belief), but the whole thing takes so few prisoners and offers up so many solid belly laughs these sequences can almost (if not quite) be forgiven.
What cannot be excused is the film’s third act foray into timidly tired romantic comedy. Not only do these moments of cliché melodrama ruin all that has come before, it extends out an already slightly overlong feature to an almost unbearable length. The laughs don’t so much disappear as evaporate into nothingness, and what was a film that had me reaching for the Kleenex to keep my eyes from welling up thanks to all the hilarity suddenly had me sitting in the theater sighing in tiredly disappointment incredulity.
At first, Peter Straughan’s script offers up insights and laughs in almost equal helpings, the writer crafting fantastic character roles almost tailor made for the wildly divergent personalities and talents of Pegg, Dunst, Bridges, Fox and Danny Huston. Anderson, in particular, eats this film alive, the under-appreciated X-Files star diving headlong into her nastily manipulative and condescending publicist with such unabashed relish I sat their watching her in infatuated awe.
Unfortunately the writer just can’t finish what he begins, the whole movie turning on a dime in the last fifteen or so minutes to go down a path so rote and familiar it literally made me want to curl up in my seat and take a nap. Worse, director Robert B. Weide completely drops the ball, all the energy and excitement beautifully crafted during the first two-thirds disappearing in a proverbial heartbeat. The films stalls, flatlines even, and as much as I appreciated and adored the opening sections once this takes its disastrous detour no amount of CPR could bring it back to life.
Pity, because Pegg needs to be a star, but after this and Run Fatboy Run it doesn’t look like that can happen as long as he continues to make pictures away from Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead cohorts Edgar Wright and Nick Frost. While he’s great here (just like he was in that earlier David Schwimmer disappointment), the movie can’t help but ultimately let him down, and every time I think the actor is about to find a breakout role and become this generation’s Peter Sellers the film itself ultimately implodes.
Listen, for about 90 or so minutes there I thought How to Lose Friends & Alienate People was going to end up being a winner, maybe even giving Tropic Thunder a run for its money as the year’s best satire. But thanks to some unforgivable lapses and a devastatingly unsatisfying last act this simply wasn’t the case, and almost as if the filmmakers took the title of their movie a bit too seriously by the time it was over it’s quite possible they’d alienated me enough to make my continued friendship totally impossible.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
Additional Links:
- How to Lose Friends & Alienate People Theatrical Trailer
