One would think that a director usually makes the difference in distinguishing the material from other, more standard fare. Robert Weide, while working mostly in TV, has over 2 dozen Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes to his credit, and as such one might think he would be prime material to direct some solid satire. Yet perhaps for Wiede it's the writing that makes the difference, ultimately, or just based on some of the actors he works with. Simon Pegg is no Larry David, but on his own Pegg is very funny and with the right material (notably that with collaborator Edgar Wright) has created some exceptional British parodies. He's also got a strange charm to him, an affecting wit, and delivery that is up to snuff with other American actors he's working with here. But he can't completely overcome the screenplay.
How to Lose Friends and Alienate people is about a wildman writer/editor at a cultish British magazine, and gets some tabloid buzz about bringing a pig to an awards show and getting totally smashed in the process. He grabs the attention of a once-maverick editor of a prestigious Manhattan magazine (Jeff Bridges), who hires him in part because (according to Pegg) he reminds him of his younger self. But he never gets an article published, at least without some hassle, and he also has some stiff competition with an older rival, and an attractive editor (Kirsten Dunst), not to mention an insatiable, sexy Megan Fox as a typically snooty celebrity gearing up for an awards-worthy part as a nun in a movie.
To the credit of the cast and the director, it is a watchable effort, at least for those who may be able to spot references to La Dolce Vita (as if it weren't nailing it a little over the head), and occasionally there are some really big laugh out-loud gags (one I'll remember for a long while involves a prank call for a bunch of call-girls into the office of prickly a-hole Lawrence Maddox played by Danny Huston). But the actual love-interest angle with Pegg and Dunst is at best competent and at worst just weak and predictable with a few drunken melancholy scenes thrown in for good measure, and the likes of Bridges, Gillian Anderson (as Fox's stand-offish but shallow agent) and Fox herself playing on a theme of discontented "hot" talents are usually at the mercy of a screenplay that only intermittently gives them things to latch on to. I wouldn't mind seeing large parts of it on TV again, especially for some of Pegg's stinging barbs of dialog, but it's a partial disappointment.
How to Lose Friends and Alienate people is about a wildman writer/editor at a cultish British magazine, and gets some tabloid buzz about bringing a pig to an awards show and getting totally smashed in the process. He grabs the attention of a once-maverick editor of a prestigious Manhattan magazine (Jeff Bridges), who hires him in part because (according to Pegg) he reminds him of his younger self. But he never gets an article published, at least without some hassle, and he also has some stiff competition with an older rival, and an attractive editor (Kirsten Dunst), not to mention an insatiable, sexy Megan Fox as a typically snooty celebrity gearing up for an awards-worthy part as a nun in a movie.
To the credit of the cast and the director, it is a watchable effort, at least for those who may be able to spot references to La Dolce Vita (as if it weren't nailing it a little over the head), and occasionally there are some really big laugh out-loud gags (one I'll remember for a long while involves a prank call for a bunch of call-girls into the office of prickly a-hole Lawrence Maddox played by Danny Huston). But the actual love-interest angle with Pegg and Dunst is at best competent and at worst just weak and predictable with a few drunken melancholy scenes thrown in for good measure, and the likes of Bridges, Gillian Anderson (as Fox's stand-offish but shallow agent) and Fox herself playing on a theme of discontented "hot" talents are usually at the mercy of a screenplay that only intermittently gives them things to latch on to. I wouldn't mind seeing large parts of it on TV again, especially for some of Pegg's stinging barbs of dialog, but it's a partial disappointment.