How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008)

Directed by Robert B. Weide
Written by Peter Straughan, Toby Young (autobiographical? book)
Starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox, Jeff Bridges

Synopsis
obnoxious british journalist gets hired by a high profile new york magazine. he embarrasses himself on a daily basis, and wants to get into the pants of a new starlet. he wants to stay true to his beliefs that most of hollywood are just a bunch of pig fuckers, but it's soooo hard to resist megan fox's vagina. kirsten dunst plays his way more attractive co-worker who he has undeniable i hate you, but i really like you chemistry. romantic comedy plot #2 ensues.....

MOster
I'm tempted to just write, "2+2=4" and be done with it.  I understood that this was based on a memoir, but I have to believe that the actual person's life wasn't nearly this predictable.  This is little more than a standard rom-com with some (SOME) above-average-funny lines.


I love Simon Pegg, and I think he did as much as possible with material which put him squarely in his comfort zone.  The supporting cast were all fine.  I don't know much about Megan Fox in real life, but she plays a fucking moron very well.  I think we're supposed to get the idea that many of the others (Gillian Anderson in particular) are actually parodying specific types of people but nobody seems to be having that much fun in those roles.  Jeff Bridges has one cool scene at the end, and of course Kirsten Dunst knows how to play a cute, stupid girl.


I can't speak too much about the technical stuff on this one because we watched it fucking pan & scan.  But I will say that I barely noticed that it was in pan & scan and that points to some pretty shitty direction.  Production value was right where you'd expect it to be.


So, yeah.  This is the sort of move you flip to when it's on if you haven't seen it.  But you don't need to go out of your way to watch it and you certainly don't need to watch it more than once.


The Woman
having watched "spaced" i feel let down in simon pegg's choice of movies lately. they seem like they have potential and then they just resort to standard issue romantic comedy plots. there were a couple of subtle movie references which i don't know was intentional or not. like the whole "la dolce vita" mentions, when that's about the swanky life of a hollywood reporter as well, or the fact that he calls his landlady lebowski by accident, and kirsten dunst's boyfriend drinks white russians. i don't know. i could be making it all up in my head. there were funny moments in this movie, but i don't quite think it was enough to pull it out of the romantic comedy mudslide it got caught in.