HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE (*1/2) - Starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Megan Fox, Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Miriam Margoyles, and Max Minghella.
Directed by Robert B. Weide.
This movie should have ended at the 40-minute mark with Simon Pegg's Sidney getting fired. Or if he had another chance, at the 60-minute mark. But somehow at the 60-minute mark, Sidney is still not fired.
Sidney is the editor of a struggling gossipy-snarky celeb magazine who gets hired to join the staff of one of New York's most successful magazines (it's called Sharpe's but I believe it's based on Vanity Fair). His first day on the job, he wears a widly inappropriate T-shirt. It's hard to empathethize/root for someone who's such a fool.
Sidney's goal is to make Sharpe's more hard-hitting, more snipey. Apparently he's never heard of the internet, home of a million snarky celeb-centric blogs. Sidney is unlikeably written but he's played by Simon Pegg. Which just reminded me of Run Fatboy Run, another movie where he plays a boor where I kinda wanted him to lose in the end.
This is like The Devil Wears Prada, except the employee isn't that nice to begin with, and the boss isn't that evil. Opportunities for a sharp satire are left by the wayside, and we get mushy scenes and slapstick scenes mixed in with a little Hollywood nastiness.
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