How To Lose Friends And Alienate People (2008)

Sounds good

Natrick [Highly rated reviewer] , 12/02/2008

Billed as a 'testosterone laced The Devil Wears Prada', Toby Young's sardonic memoir of his time tackling the glossy magazine scene in New York, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People is directed by 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' director Bob Weide

According to director Bob Weide, once he took on How To Lose Friends And Alienate People he was asked how he planned to make the central character, Sidney Young, likeable. Drawing on British journalist Toby Young's autobiographical best seller, Young is 'greedy, pushy and cynical, a balding hack on the make.' The answer Bob Weide gave, 'Two words: Simon Pegg.'

In the adaptation, Sidney Young works in London editing the 'Post Modern Review', a witty, intellectual publication that simultaneously derides and is fascinated by celebrity. He is then hired by Clayton Harding to work on Sharp's magazine, after the editor is impressed by Young's disruption of a post-BAFTA party with a pig posing as Babe. He becomes close to a rising starlet, Sophie Maes, but falls for colleague Alison Olsen. Over the course of the book, a drunken Toby Young affronts Mel Gibson at the 'Vanity Fair' Oscars party, asks a strippergram to the magazine's offices on 'Bring Your Daughter To Work Day', and takes cocaine with Damien Hirst on a ruined photo shoot: it remains to be seen which - if any - of these notorious stories make it into the film.

Weide is the director of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm', the acclaimed American television series that stars Larry David as himself - that is, a semi-retired multi-millionaire. The show is partly-improvised and filmed in the style of a documentary. David's character is socially inept, neurotic and thwarted by events he is ill-equipped to handle. Weide has also directed a number of documentaries on renegade comedians, including Lenny Bruce: Swear To Tell The Truth and The Marx Brothers In A Nutshell. The script for How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, written by the Brit Peter Straughan, was pitched to Weide by his agent as a 'modernized Ealing comedy'. 'The Sunday Times' described the book as, 'The longest self-deprecating joke' since the complete works of Woody Allen.'

Read all reviews

dont waste your time!

jo0812 from Beaworthy , 05/10/2008

dont bother going to see this film, its not funny didnt make us laugh and we couldnt wait to get out of the cinema!

Read all reviews

Chick flick !!!

A customer from Sheffield , 06/10/2008

Simon Pegg is funny. The film is fun to watch, however, it is somewhat predicatable offering very little suprise.

Read all reviews

Outrageously funny feel-good film!

tunnelweb from Hamilton [Highly rated reviewer] , 11/10/2008

An outrageously laugh-out loud funny feel-good film. Pegg and Bridges play off each other wonderfully, while Dunst does a good job playing a more complicated love interest and Anderson a wily publicist queen, used to getting her own way. An excellent mix, which lifts this otherwise typical film above its competitors.

Read all reviews

A round Pegg in a square hole

PaulaWestwood from Ashton-Under-Lyne [Highly rated reviewer] , 20/10/2008

You do really get what you order from Simon Pegg and there are no huge surprises here, being a 'lad' and writing a lads mag has brought Pegg to the attention of a big media player in New York. The opportunity to shake things up a bit in the big apple is too much to resist but it comes as a bit of a culture shock from being No.1 in his own smalltime publication to becoming another bottom rung minion starting on the ladder in a big publishing house, and he is a bit of a round Pegg in a square hole. Being a lads lad he wants to do things his way ending up in several scrapes with stars and his own team, before giving in to the ass kissing foibles of his new peers and becoming an unwitting success. The road to get there is paved with quite a few laughs and I found this much more funny and entertaining than I first expected, not the best or funniest thing ever, but a quite acceptable bit of fun to pass the odd couple of hours. If you have nothing else on the go this might just be worth a play.

Read all highest rated reviews

An outrageously laugh-out

test211008 from Peterborough , 21/10/2008

An outrageously laugh-out loud funny feel-good film. Pegg and Bridges play off each other wonderfully, while Dunst does a good job playing a more complicated love interest and Anderson a wily publicist queen, used to getting her own way. An excellent mix, which lifts this otherwise typical film above its competitors.

Read all highest rated reviews