How To Lose Friends and Alienate People review

How To Lose Friends And Alienate People based upon the memoir of Toby Young, it tells the story of Sidney Young (Simon Pegg), a failing editor of his own film magazine who attempts to break into celebrity parties to score interviews with celebrities, this leads to a well written and charming conversation between Sidney and Thandie Newton. After a stint at a celebrity party Sidney is offered a job at a New York magazine company working for Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges) whilst there he meets Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) and tries to make a name for himself and impress his boss unfortunately every time he tries it just ends up with him going back to square one and embarassing himself.
There are many similar comedies to How To Lose Friends and Alienate People which would employ very similar jokes, but what it is that makes this film different is that it establishes a firm foundation on which to make these jokes. This foundation is consisted of a good amount of character development and by having a character who has a calm sense of the world but finds himself in very tense situations which leads me to see why Simon Pegg was hired for the role of Sidney. Though Sidney is a jerk in a lot of respects it is Simon Pegg which encompasses the vision that Sidney is a nice man trapped in a jerks body who you unconditionally love despite his faults.
By having a clear and organised foundation and a good amount of relevant, funny jokes the only way this film can go is up, and it does by continuing the same style but progressing through the story at a very comfortable level, making this a film that you could sit down and watch and not have to think about a thing just know that it's there to make you laugh and i can assure you it will (unless you're a humourless limpet).
All together everything that this film gives allows it to be very charming and slightly inspiring which makes this a very realistic love story which is what it needs to be seeing as it is set around real life.

I was particularly suprised by Kirsten Dunst, though her performance wasn't anything worthy of an award it did prove to me that she in fact isn't a bad actress overall, i don't think much other people (except Rachel Weisz) could portray that nice a bitch without seeming repulsively annoying or uncannily sarcastic.
But Jeff Bridges for me was where most of this films acting talent was. Jeff Bridges seems to have a voice that is both incredibly clear but also intriguing and slightly forceful and this helps a lot in portraying a boss who is a fun, good man but ultimately has a company to run and has to be harsh when he needs to be. Jeff Bridges also showed that he can be incredibly serious and it is this sort of seriousness that paves the way for joke after joke from Simon Pegg which is the main reason that the scenes between Sidney and Clayton were my favourite.

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People is a consistently funny but moreso charming film that will keep people easily entertained and give people the great feeling of knowing that they're at least going to get 1 good laugh out of it and gives an accurate and extremely interesting look at media in New York.

Rating: ****
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