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How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
Metascore
35 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 25 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 25
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 25
  3. Negative: 10 out of 25
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  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    Possibly the best movie that could be made about Toby Young that isn't rated NC-17.
  2. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Connie Ogle
    75
    This film, directed by Curb Your Enthusiasm's Robert Weide, makes an entertaining companion piece to his book.
  3. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Ruthe Stein
    75
    A sharp-witted satire of celebrity journalism.
  4. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    63
    Feels jumbled and disorganized. It's not altogether unpalatable, but that doesn't present it from being a mess.
  5. Empire
    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.
  6. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    60
    Pegg has some good obnoxious moments, but he's only a few movies away from becoming Dudley Moore.
  7. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    58
    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.
  8. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Marc Mohan
    58
    It devolves too often into slapstick shenanigans and comedy of embarrassment.
  9. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Bill White
    58
    The result is an initially hilarious picture that grows perplexingly trite as screenwriter Peter Straughan transforms Young's sly observations into assembly-line pap.
  10. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Scott Bowles
    50
    Gets muddled in slapstick and crude humor.
  11. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Stephen Cole
    50
    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.
  12. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Stina Chyn
    50
    Packs a full plate of gasps and giggles.
  13. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Mary Elizabeth Williams
    50
    When Pegg is breaking protocols with his uniquely ballsy aplomb, dancing like a doofus or doing battle with Venetian blinds, the film almost flies.
  14. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Sheri Linden
    40
    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.
  15. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Robert Abele
    40
    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.
  16. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    38
    An embarassingly unfunny, stumblebum adaptation of Toby Young's memoir.
  17. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    38
    Nothing in How to Lose Friends feels fresh or on target.
  18. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Josh Rosenblatt
    30
    Where Young's book was a slap in the face, this movie is a kick on the backside, all hokey humor and quaint lovability.
  19. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    30
    Cleverly titled but noxious British comedy.
  20. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    30
    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.
  21. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    25
    Someone describes his writing as "snarky, bitter, witless." The last part pretty well sums up this movie.
  22. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    25
    People's title proves prophetic, only this time the people being alienated are the suckers in the paying audience.
  23. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    20
    Problem is, this movie is all surface - to quote one character, it has hidden shallows.
  24. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Robert Wilonsky
    10
    Weide's big-screen version is sitcom-drab.
  25. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    0
    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.
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User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.5 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 34 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 13
  3. Negative: 4 out of 13
  1. Halfwelshman
    5
    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.… Full Review »
  2. MichaelD
    5
    I expected too much from this movie. There was a few one-off gags but overall I was disappointed.
  3. Hyperbole
    0
    Kills the thought process I had that Jeff Bridges can't be in a bad film. Hyper real, but in a bad bad way. It's not funny at all. I understand what its trying to do, but it just does it so awfully.… Full Review »
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