How To Lose Friends and Alienate People :: Wessex Scene Online

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People

28th September 2008
Nicholas Brown

About this film

Title	How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
Director	Robert B. Weide
Release Date	3 October 2008
Certificate
Genres	Comedy
Our Rating	3.0/5.0
Shown at Union Films Sunday 14th December 2008 5:00pm

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How To Lose Friends and Alienate People

We take a look at Simon Pegg’s new comedy How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Could it be one of the best films ever made?

BBC Film Critic and Official Friend of the University Mark Kermode has a theory that you can predict a film is going to be bad if you see it advertised on the sides of buses or on phone boxes. If the theory holds true, Simon Pegg’s new comedy How to Lose Friends and Alienate People should be one of the worst films ever made. It seems like you cannot turn a corner nowadays, without running into Pegg’s gurning face. One can only wonder how strongly the film is being marketed across the pond where supporting actors Kirsten Dunst and Jeff Bridges are the only cast members with crowd-pulling clout.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People posits itself as a hilarious comedy of errors with Pegg as Brit journalist Sidney Young, leaving a trail of destruction across high-society New York as he bumbles from embarrassment to embarrassment while in the employment of Sharps magazine. (He spits food! He wears a rude tshirt!) It certainly has an apt director – Robert Weide best known for his direction of the Larry David comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, makes his feature film debut, and a fitting source – the memoirs of Toby Young who wrote about his embarrassing experiences as a British journalist at Vanity Fair before his inevitable firing.

Young has certainly made a career out of his short-lived post at the famous magazine and continued to cause a stir during the film’s production alleging he’d been banned from the set (rumour has it Kirsten Dunst was unhappy to be given notes on her performance during takes) and fired from the production (in reality his script treatment had been turned down and the writing duty given to professional screenwriter Peter Straughan).

Simon Pegg reminisced about Young’s notoriety which occasionally added interesting hurdles to filming: “There was a point where we were rehearsing in the Groucho Club before we started shooting and we asked the management if Toby could come along and perhaps sit in and they said “What part of Banned for Life don’t you understand?” Director Robert Weide called him “a liability but a good liability”.

The challenge for production was then two-fold: turn a disjointed set of anecdotes into a cohesive narrative and create a protagonist that is both unbearable yet likeable. Unfortunately they only half succeed. Simon Pegg’s turn as Sidney is the kind of naughty-schoolboy likeable loser performance we’ve come to expect from him, but it’s just what the film needs. It may be Pegg’s first starring role away from friends Edgar Wright, Nick Frost and Hollywood chum David Schwimmer but his first solo foray into feature waters still leaves the creative ripple of Pegg. Sidney Young reels off film quotes, jokes about bodypopping and drunkenly jumps around listening to Metallica. Suffice to say we are on somewhat familiar territory here, yet Pegg denies deliberately typecasting himself:

“I don’t really have a gameplan. I just want to do stuff that I enjoy, work with people I enjoy working with and get satisfaction in my work. I’m not planning it all out ‘now I have to play a villain because I’ve played two nice guys in a row or whatever’”.

While creating a soft side to his character it was impossible not to draw parallels between the journalist trying to make it in New York and the Gloucester-born actor working in LA. “There were definitely parallels about being British in America...it’s tempting to believe that we are part of the same continent, because we speak the same language we are country-fellows and we’re not, we are from a different country.”

Producer Stephen Wolley explained how they solved the problem of translating the book into a script with the addition of a romantic interest. “We we wanted to do was really find a spine to the tale, a romance, so Sidney Young not only falls in love with New York but also a character from New York.” Sadly, the crowbarring-in of a love interest for Sidney diverts the film into generic romantic comedy clichés. Sidney must choose between lust and love. Sidney must deal with a rival suitor.

Sidney gets a lesson about the price of fame. It’s a shame that a lot of the film’s potential is wasted on these tired conventions.

The plot does take a few unexpected turns, but this seems to be because of the numerous plot threads left hanging. Characters are introduced and then forgotten, plot points are introduced but serve no purpose to the overall narrative. The effect is quite jarring and unfortunately serves only to disconnect the viewer as the film begins to resemble highlights from a TV series. How to Lose Friends is certainly not awful. The sets are suitably lavish and give an immediate sense of cosmopolitan New York and the acting is more than capable.

Jeff Bridges in particular swings between cold boss and confused ex-rebel with conviction. (His long white hair seemingly making up for his baldness in Iron Man.) The combination of Gillian Anderson’s icy agent and Megan Fox’s pouty starlet add glamour and sex appeal but are not rewarded with any real character resolution. Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst stick close enough to the roles they’re famous for but rarely sparkle. The comedy is ‘fun’ rather than funny, but bubbles along at a suitable rate. Occasionally the script goes for cringes rather than laughs, relying on two indentical transsexual gags. “She has a penis!” really isn’t the kind of strong running gag a film like this deserves.

Office comedy has been done better (Devil Wears Prada, Ugly Betty) but How to Lose Friends and Influence People certainly tries hard and its heart is in the right place. Go without expectation and you won’t be disappointed.