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How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 25 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 20 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy
Written by:
Peter Straughan
Toby Young
Directed by: Robert B. Weide
Release Date:
Theatrical: October 3, 2008
Running Time: 110 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Summary
RATING: R for language, some graphic nudity and brief drug material
Starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Danny Huston, Gillian Anderson, Megan Fox, Max Minghella, and Jeff Bridges
In this hilariously funny fish-out-of-water tale, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People tracks the outrageous escapades of Sidney Young, a smalltime, bumbling, British celebrity journalist who is hired by an upscale magazine in New York City. In spectacular fashion Sidney enters high society and burns bridges with bosses, peers and superstars. The film is based on Toby Young's memoir of the same name. (MGM)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Possibly the best movie that could be made about Toby Young that isn't rated NC-17.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
A sharp-witted satire of celebrity journalism.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
This film, directed by Curb Your Enthusiasm's Robert Weide, makes an entertaining companion piece to his book.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Feels jumbled and disorganized. It's not altogether unpalatable, but that doesn't present it from being a mess.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Pegg has some good obnoxious moments, but he's only a few movies away from becoming Dudley Moore.
Read Full Review >Empire Helen O'Hara
Not as smart or as satirical as you might hope, but an enjoyable and often funny look at a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Best in show is the divine Gillian Anderson as a powerful celebrity publicist, editing the image of her clients in much the same way this adaptation tames Young's much pricklier book.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White
The result is an initially hilarious picture that grows perplexingly trite as screenwriter Peter Straughan transforms Young's sly observations into assembly-line pap.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan
It devolves too often into slapstick shenanigans and comedy of embarrassment.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams
When Pegg is breaking protocols with his uniquely ballsy aplomb, dancing like a doofus or doing battle with Venetian blinds, the film almost flies.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole
Unfortunately, both Bridges and Anderson are only intermittently in the movie. And when they're not around, How to Lose Friends loses its satirical edge, becoming an alarmingly safe, almost corny romantic comedy.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Robert Abele
The putrid showbiz comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People appears to hit DEFCON 5 in mistaking its brand of moral laxity for cutesy irreverence.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden
Simon Pegg is likably smart and obnoxious as the fish-out-of-water Brit in high-gloss Manhattan, but he's swimming upstream in a feature that substitutes slapstick for scathing wit.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
An embarassingly unfunny, stumblebum adaptation of Toby Young's memoir.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
Where Young's book was a slap in the face, this movie is a kick on the backside, all hokey humor and quaint lovability.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
The movie based on Young's 2002 memoir is a good bit blunter. One early laugh comes at the expense of a pig urinating on a woman's feet at the BAFTA awards, the British equivalent of the Oscars. And it doesn't get much better, or much smarter, than that.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
People's title proves prophetic, only this time the people being alienated are the suckers in the paying audience.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Someone describes his writing as "snarky, bitter, witless." The last part pretty well sums up this movie.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Problem is, this movie is all surface - to quote one character, it has hidden shallows.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 20 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
john doe gave it a10:
Personally I loved this film and and some of these critics that rated this movie are not going to give it above 90 unless it's the best movie that ever happened to mankind and even then the new york times and time magazine would only give it a 50. I loved this movie and I would reccomend everyone to buy it or at least rent it.
Peter A gave it a1:
The first movie I've actually walked out of (about 20 minutes from the end) in about 15 years. There comes a point where you have to ask yourself "don't I have anything better to do than watch a movie?" What's so wrong with it? I think Wilonsky from the Village Voice captures this movies problems well. Don't waste your time or money on this garbage.
James P. gave it a7:
You probably have to be British to appreciate this film. What What Brit hasn't got wasted at a party, stood on the band's stage and shouted ENG-ER-LUND ENG-ER-LUND until falling over comatose? I know I have. Maybe New Yorkers don't do that sort of thing. Looks like they probably should.
Robert J. gave it a9:
I loved this film! I was expecting bad things after reading teh Metacritic ratings but we had already booked our Goldclass tickets so had to go, Went in expecting to be able to go to sleep but no what an enjoyable film. It was funny, yes some slapstick but overall Simon Pegg was very convincing. I haven't read the book but will get it now. I wonder if all the negative reviews were from US journalists who it hit a raw nerve with. It's basically about insincerity and does not put US journalists in a particularly good light. A telling scene at a party when Pegg's charachter says that in the UK they keep people out of these parties whereas in the US the celebs gush all over the journalists almost begging them to write a story on them. In the end he saw the light and got out. I would say go and see it and don't let these creepy journalists watching a film which exposes them for the hypocrites we despise and no them to be.
Danny G. gave it a7:
Certainly not a great movie but it is perfectly amiable, with a few sharp digs at the excesses of the New York bourgeoisie (which might explain the overwhelmingly bad reviews in the USA). The cast is excellent. I wish the script had been tighter, the direction less perfunctory but it doesn't deserve the critical panning it has received. I guess it is true. North Americans don't get irony.
Alex J. gave it a2:
The amusement factor of the film seemed to be in inverse proportion to the success of Pegg's character. Are we supposed to actually be rooting for this moron? The love story with Dunst was horribly contrived as well.
Chad S. gave it a6:
Karen Valby profiles author Nicholas Sparks in the latest issue of "Entertainment Weekly". Since her subject comes across as something of a preening ass, the reader can surmise that "True Believer" is definitely not a puff piece. If Sparks' publicist had copy approval, she'd blue pencil the part about the author's asinine notion that only he and Toni Morrison are the only contemporary writers to have their books come out in Cliff Notes. In "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People", Sidney Young(Simon Pegg) works for an "EW"-type magazine that lost its way, just like how legendary music journalist Lester Bangs predicted it would in Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous", when he warns his young protege about where music(or rather, entertainment) journalism is heading. The vertically-challenged Brit loses his objectivity by making friends with the movie stars. He pursues, and eventually wins the right to be the accessory of a sexy, but vapid starlet named Sophie Maes(Megan Fox). He also writes an article that showers undue praise over a filmmaker he despises(a Guy Ritchie-type, somebody influenced by Quentin Tarantino). With some differences, this film still maintains the basic framework of Billy Wilder's "The Apartment", in which both narratives feature protagonists who fall for a co-worker already attached romantically to their married bosses. In the Wilder film, C.C. Baxter(Jack Lemmon) gets a promotion by playing ball with Mr. Sheldrake(Fred MacMurray), even though the company head breaks the elevator girl's heart(Fran Kubelik, played by Shirley MacLaine). Similarly, Sidney is the beneficiary of a better job, Alison's job(Kirsten Dunst), in fact, after she and her married lover(Alison's boss(Danny Huston), but not the big boss) are fired by Clayton Harding(Jeff Bridges). "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People", albeit knowledgable about celebrity culture, will probably lose and alienate professional women by its retrogressive suggestion that Alison would readily rush into the arms of Simon, who took over her job as Arts Editor without ever giving it a second thought. "La Dolce Vita"(Alison's favorite film), apparently, transformed this professional woman into an elevator girl(both "The Apartment" and the Federico Fellini film came out in 1960), the kind of girl who would read "The Notebook"(yes, it's coming out in Cliff Notes).
