How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.

"Based on Toby Young's comic memoir of the same title, the crushingly unfunny and slopped-together How to Lose Friends & Alienate People has neither the ambition nor the intelligence to do justice to its source material," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.

"It's silly but mostly entertaining, and [Simon] Pegg's open, expressive face is always funny," writes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "Perhaps without entirely realising it, the movie provides a through-the-looking-glass satirical version of Ugly Betty and The Devil Wears Prada."

Updated through 10/6.

"Robert Weide's big-screen version is sitcom-drab," writes Robert Wilonsky in the Voice.

"We see Young landing a job at Sharps magazine (clearly a clone of Vanity Fair) and arriving in New York in a red T-shirt with Young, Dumb and Full of Come emblazoned across it," notes Derek Malcolm in the Evening Standard. "Before that, he has tried to get into the Baftas accompanied by a pig, and presided over the hysterical death throes of the Modern Review, the magazine he co-founded, in an office above a London kebab shop. We don't, however, see his unfortunate period as my deputy at the Guardian, where he regularly undercut my comments with withering observations about the films I liked (by such as Terence Davies) and high praise for every dumb action movie I decried."

"For a film about upholding personal ideals, its glossy packaging and derivative 'will he get the girl?' narrative sell any credibility down the river in favour of affected screwball larks about transvestite strippers and dead chihuahuas," writes David Jenkins in Time Out. "Add to that a tired idea of bumbling but lovable Brits abroad (The Hugh Grant Syndrome) and a lazy, antiquated depiction of journalism, and there isn't much to trouble the intellect."

As a stand-in for Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, Jeff Bridges "has a nice monologue about the ruthless, hierarchal nature of success but his dignified performance belongs in a different, better film," notes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club. "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People's title proves prophetic, only this time the people being alienated are the suckers in the paying audience."

"For most of the film Sidney is, to paraphrase Sting, an English jerk in New York; only later do we learn that he has hidden depths, a measured world view, an intellectual family." The Telegraph's David Gritten: "But it's too late: these attributes feel bolted on. Still, Pegg gives it his best. He's a gifted physical comedian, at home with double takes and pratfalls, and outstanding at dancing really badly with an elated expression; he can clear a disco floor in seconds."

"Presumably based on actual occurrences fascinating enough to fuel a bestselling book, the film too often strands our protagonist in situations straight out of Meet the Fockers," writes David Schmader in the Stranger. "This encroaching formulism ultimately dooms the film, which stumbles into its final act as an if-you-say-so romantic comedy."

"[W]hen it's not turning the real Young's escapades - ordering a stripper to a colleague's office on Take Our Daughters to Work Day or asking a musical comedy star upfront if he's Jewish and gay - into lifeless comic bits, it appropriates everything else like The Devil Wears Prada, The Apartment and anything by the Farrelly brothers," writes Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times. "It leaves the whole affair derivative, tone-deaf and garishly unfunny."

"Like the characters it portrays, How to Lose Friends eventually becomes the very thing it mocks, its delectable naughtiness sacrificed to sentiment and audience appeal," writes Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon.

Andy Gill in the Independent: "As a satire on the modern obsession with celebrity, it's paltry stuff, and as a romantic comedy it's virtually a non-starter, but Pegg has a charm that compensates for Young's bumptious persona, and he nails the occasional funny lines with an expert's comic timing."

"The film has none of the self-lacerating pain of Young's book, but as an exercise in humiliation it is second to none," finds James Christopher in the London Times.

Interviews with Pegg: Shaun Brady (Philadelphia City Paper), Nathan Rabin (AV Club) - and Time readers.

Adam Baer talks with Weide for Salon.

Online listening tip. Ambrose Heron talks with Pegg and Weide.

Update, 10/6: Joe Leydon talks with Pegg for the Houston Chronicle.

Posted by dwhudson at October 3, 2008 7:33 AM