How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Sydney Young (Simon Pegg) has just landed the job of his dreams, upgrading from editing the witty but thankless Postmodern Review in London to staff writer at swanky New York magazine Sharps, working for editor-in-chief Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges). He is already a bête noire of inner celeb circles in Britain, we have seen him kicked out of the BAFTAs in a rain of pig shit (yes, honestly) and he is now trying his unique charm on the New York magazine elite. He thinks he is there to shake things up a bit but Harding clearly hired him on a moment’s nostalgia for his own satirical youth and regrets it from the moment Sydney struts into his hallowed office wearing a t-shirt that says “Young, Dumb and full of Come”. Sydney catogorically does not fit in to the elegant world of Armani suits and glamazon women. From a rocky start with Harding, things go from bad to worse as time goes by. The sum total of Sydney’s contribution to the magazine are some transsexual strippers and a dead Chihuahua in the office. Defiantly, Sydney just can’t help himself from, well, being himself. He can’t help taking cocaine at a 4^th July party and singing football songs to a deadpan Hamptons crowd, or playing ball with a tiny dog in a skyscraper with an open window. He is always just “trying to make friends” or “trying to be funny” though, as it says on the tin, he is losing friends and alienating people left, right and centre, mostly because the pretentious botox–faced millionaires can’t take a joke. But also because he behaves like a total cretin. Luckily, he is played by Simon Pegg, who could re-enact Enoch Powell’s River of Blood speech and still make me giggle and coo all at once, so you want him to win. Even more so when a blossoming love interest in the form of an office lovely, aspiring novelist Alison (Kirsten Dunst), ends in her running off with the boss and Sydney’s arch nemesis, Lawrence Maddox.

Just when it all looks hopeless for our limey anti-hero, he realises the benefits of getting in bed with the devil (in this case it comes in the form of giving uber publicist Gillian Anderson copy approval on the features he writes on her clients) and before you know it, he is at the equivalent of the Golden Globe awards with a starlet on his arm. A combination of humiliation and generally realising he has not made his mum proud results in a lightening bolt moment as he finally figures out that success has come at too large a cost and, actually, he needs to go get Alison (who conveniently has dumped Maddox declaring she is in love with Young). And hurrah! The films ends on a very sweet note. Sydney has stayed true to himself, a ridiculous, obnoxious, hilarious goon with bad clothes and has got the girl. Not just any girl, the prettiest, loveliest girl going.

“How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” is a fun ride. It has several laugh out loud moments, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” comedy king Robert Weide has made it his own with next big thing screenwriter Peter Straughan’s strong script. It feels like a Prada-wearing Devil has stumbled onto a Judd Apatow colony in Notting Hill and like all of it’s ancestors, has a message so simple you could write it on a cocktail napkin. In love and life, just be yourself and all will be ok. Hang on. I have heard that somewhere before. Oh that’s right, every single time I have ever gone on a date, embarked on an ill-fated relationship or wondered why a boy hasn’t called, someone says to me, or I say to them or I say to myself “just be yourself”. Really…myself, eh? Without make up, high heels and a nice dress…in pyjamas at midday on a Wednesday eating toast, not laughing at a joke unless I think it is funny, sulking because I’ve lost my sock? If I am entirely honest, that is my true self and I am not sure that would get me my man. For this reason, I am a little bored of comedies about absolute loser’s getting the gorgeous girl. How to Lose Friends, Knocked Up, There is Something About Mary…the list is endless. It is like a warm and fuzzy Trojan horse smuggling in a pretty aggressive message under this touchy-feely nice guy winning stuff. What these movies say to the world is “Ladies. Listen up. Good men are in short supply, we have to take what we can. Yeah, so, he doesn’t have a job/any social skills/all his hair/a clean smell. He is a nice guy who won’t cheat on you. Grab him!” This is especially offensive as it is nearly always a man at the megaphone. This sort of scare-mongering is the kind that leaves supermarket shelves empty of water, batteries and tinned goods at the mere hint of a hurricane and I do not like it being shoved onto my single life. Honestly, if Kirsten Dunst, Katherine Heigl, Cameron Diaz et al can’t get a tall handsome man who is charming and funny and sweet that what on earth hope is there for the rest of us? And it does always make me wonder, where are all these alpha men with their shiny hair and winning charm and who exactly are they dating? Each other, probably.