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How to Lose Friends & Alienate People reminds me of a dog I had when I was a kid. It was this huge Great Dane that would lumber around and trip all over himself and destroy things in the process. Anyone who saw him for the first time would be scared to death, but he was dumb as a bag of hammers and just as harmless. That’s pretty much where the comparison stops because I loved that dog and still have fond memories of him. On the other hand, I saw the movie late last night and can barely remember enough about it to write this review.

Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) runs a British celebrity rag and makes a living pissing people off; crashing celebrity parties to get close to people more famous than himself and patting himself on the back when he succeeds in doing so. In his pocket he keeps a laminated photo of himself in the wrong end of a Clint Eastwood headlock. He’s that kinda guy. For no sensibly explicable reason, he is recruited by Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges) to cross the pond and work for Sharps Magazine, an upscale New York magazine with a celebrity reputation. Even before his first day of work he is already trying to use his new position to get women to notice him. He hits on a girl at a bar named Alison (Kirsten Dunst). Guess where she works? That  goes without saying and we’ll just add that the first time he takes a woman home from a club, things don't go as planned. His first night in America is moderately funny, if not 100 percent predictable, but by the time he starts working you can see exactly where the movie is headed. He causes random mischief over and over again, isn’t nearly as victimized by the repercussions as he should be, plays it straight for a while to get ahead, then swings for a bit of personal vindication. It’s a grown-up version of Home Alone without the holiday sentiment. Or even without the holiday.

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I have long since conceded the fact that the majority of  movies we see during any given year will follow a clearly laidout path, so to dislike a movie just because the formula is predictable is a slightly unfair complaint. I can handle formula so long as the pieces that make it up shine bright enough to get you past that. There were enough reasons why How to Lose Friends & Alienate People could have been good. Hollywood satire is always a good sandbox to play in if it’s done even halfway right and Simon Pegg has proven his British comedic reliability in the past with movies like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. But the only thing he proved this time around is that without Edgar Wright, his manic little British guy act isn’t nearly as heartily received. Megan Fox as Sophie Maes, a young starlet on the rise, would have been funnier if it didn’t seem like she was just playing herself. Maybe that was the point, but it was boring and obvious. Kirsten Dunst continues to prove her transparency with each passing role. As far as performances go, for as little screen time as they were allowed, Gillian Anderson (as Sophie Maes’ puppeteer of a publicist) and Jeff Bridges were both dead-on. I’d like to imagine that their performances were what the rest of the cast were aiming for. 

The reason How to Lose Friends & Alienate People fell apart were that the pieces of the machine that should have allowed it to rise above its own mediocrity simply didn’t deliver as promised. It wanted to be a scathing look at the Hollywood machine from the insider perspective of an outsider who doesn’t fit the mold. When it looked like it wasn’t getting there on concept alone, it tried to incorporate the use of that famous dry British wit for added punch. But just when it started to show its teeth it played it safe instead of going for the kill just like that stupid dog I used to have. It’s too bad, because the movie had the makings, at least in concept, of a pretty decent little comedy but like the man the movie is based on, found ways to screw it up without so much as an ounce of effort.

Film Rating: * 1/2 out of ****

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