• Starring: Megan Fox, Simon Pegg
  • Summary: 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) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 25
  2. Negative: 10 out of 25
  1. 88
    Possibly the best movie that could be made about Toby Young that isn't rated NC-17.
  2. Reviewed by: Helen O'Hara
    60
    Not as smart or as satirical as you might hope, but an enjoyable and often funny look at a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
  3. An embarassingly unfunny, stumblebum adaptation of Toby Young's memoir.

See all 25 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 13
  2. Negative: 4 out of 13
  1. johndoe
    10
    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. Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  2. For the most part, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is a decent enough British comedy film. Based on journalist Toby Young's memoirs, we follow Sideny Young (Simon Pegg) attempting to make it as a big-name journalist for the massively popular Sharps magazine based in New York. The casting is pretty inconsistent - Pegg makes for a thoroughly unlikeable protagonist (perhaps due to the man Sidney is not-so-loosely based on), but you do warm to him eventually, once you've had time to take some pleasure in some of Sidney's failures. Kirsten Dunst makes for a bit of a comedy revelation as Alison Olsen, Sidney's fellow Sharps journalist and love interest, and Gillian Anderson and Miriam Margolyes seem to be relishing their roles as powerful, media-savvy publicist Eleanor Johnson and Mrs Kowalski, Sidney's landlady respectively. Meagan Fox, surprisingly enough, also impresses, at least if, like me, you take her performance as Sophie Maes, a ditsy actress looking to be taken seriously as an aware jab at her own media image. Elsewhere the casting is rather less impressive. Jeff Bridges, playing Sharps editor Clayton Harding, does a rather fine impression of Jeff Bridges. Also, I am yet to see a film where Danny Huston, here playing Sidney's nemesis and immediate superior Lawrence Maddox, puts any effort into a role, but he's got the "skill" of talking a bit too loudly, then a bit too quietly mastered. The film has a few decent jokes, and makes a passing attempt to comment on the plasticity of celebrity and the vindictiveness of journalism, but it's too long, and somehow still manages a rushed, sloppy ending, and unfortunately for a romantic comedy, the romantic element doesn't really work. A few of the jokes miss their mark as well, and the film does resort to Farrelly-grade crudeness now and again. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People does work as a comedy, and actually tries to say something relevant about the modern world, but a few casting, writing and pacing missteps do threaten to ruin your enjoyment of the film. It's worth watching if you've got an evening to kill, and you want a bit of undemanding fun, but it's probably not worth going out of your way to see. Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  3. JenniferS.
    3
    Terrible! I only voted this movie a 3 because Megan Fox and Kirsten Dunts aren't too bad to look at...otherwise the movie was awful!!!!!!
    • 0 of 0 users said yes

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