How To Lose Friends And Alienate People: Cliché Cauldron review
HTLFAAP is a film replete with clichés. Every scene, every turn of the story reminds you of something you have seen before. It would serve you well to watch the movie with a pencil and paper and take notes every time déjà vu hits you. We can then compare notes. Here's my roster: The Apartment, The Devil Wears Prada, America's Sweethearts, Bridget Jones' Diary, The Hottie and The Nottie and even Page 3!
What you haven't seen often enough is Simon Pegg. I intend to watch Hot Fuzz now, where he is said to have delivered a side-splittingly funny performance. He plays a character here that is an irreverent hack who runs a loss making magazine in England. So when he gets a call to join a high-profile society magazine in the US, he thinks he has made it. He turns up for work on the first day with a bright red T-shirt that says, "Young, Dumb and Full of Come". Both his T-short and his aspirations go out of the window when he realizes that the real world isn't interested in his cheek and what he has to write. It's a world run by publicists and ass-lickers and impudent scribes have no role to play in it.
If I have made it seem like a heavy-handed premise, I need to correct that impression. The only thing faster than the narration is his Pegg's tongue. It's like a whiplash, deriding anyone and everyone that he talks to too. It's a role that cannot be bound by a script. You have to ad-lib a la Robin Williams or Jim Carrey, and Pegg does it well. There are moments when he will have you on the floor laughing but there aren't enough of them to keep you engaged.
From the rest of the cast, Kirsten Dunst is likeable. But that's because its her character that is supposed to be likeable. She is in direct contrast to Megan Fox, the air headed starlet Pegg lusts after. She plays a bad actress and acts the same way too. She was much better in that, ahem, tape. But let's not get into that right now. Jeff Bridges is summoned to play the tough-as-nails-but-
Weide has earlier directed the TV series Curb Your Enthusiasm where the humour is witty and the action slow paced. Fast and dumb jokes are not exactly up his alley.
HTLFAAP is a good way to kill time. With nothing better to do, it's not a bad idea to go for a film that is at best, good for a few laughs. Expect something more and you will come out disappointed.
[rating:2.5]
