About 20 minutes into director Robert Weide’s new film, Kirsten Dunst asks Simon Pegg, after he steals her boyfriend’s seat at a crowded bar, “Do you know the meaning of karma?” He clearly does not, but after nearly two hours of such inane dialogue, any limited notion of karma should, at the very least, earn me a free lunch in the next life.
“How to Lose Friends & Alienate People,” the movie adaptation of Toby Young’s memoir, stars Simon Pegg as Sidney Young, an obnoxious, Hollywood-obsessed Brit who lives above a Kebab Palace in London and edits a failing magazine called “The Post Modern Review.” His frequent attempts at party crashing grab the attention of “Sharps” magazine editor Clayton Harding, played by Jeff Bridges, who inexplicably offers Sidney a job in New York City.
Upon arriving stateside, Sidney has several revelations: his new apartment still sits atop a Kebab Palace; working for the “glossy posse”—“Sharps” is based on Vanity Fair—isn’t the riot he expected; and co-worker Alison, played by Dunst, is really mean. Dunst and Pegg are like most wacky onscreen pairs who get off on the wrong foot; it becomes obvious within several barb-filled minutes that their relationship will end happily.
Most of the movie manages to be at once cringe-inducing and entirely unfunny. It’s clear the actors are attempting to satirize Hollywood, but since most of the jokes are about transsexuals or the vapidity of actress Sophie Maes, played by “Transformers” hottie Megan Fox, this goal remains safely out of reach. Sophie slurs her speech, extols the virtues of vegetarianism, and owns a pet chihuahua, as if the creators of the film woke up and decided that mocking Paris Hilton was a novel and exciting idea.
“I resent being forced to gush,” Sidney whines to Clayton in one of his many tirades about how he wants to skewer celebrities, not pander to them. But the movie deals with his sentiment in such a tedious way that it fails to say anything new. These days, the celebrities-are-fake angle isn’t exactly revolutionary. Furthermore, the film’s attempts to add sophistication to this observation by intellectualizing its protagonist—Sidney’s dad surfaces midway through to offhandedly reveal that his son has a philosophy degree—come off as pathetic and clumsy as Sidney’s attempts to pick up women.
Weide, the Emmy-winning producer and director of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” fails to translate the comedic mastery of that show to this movie. “Curb,” while eccentric, derives its humor from the escalation of mundane situations through plausible means. Larry David may aggravate his interactions by acting petty or rude, but the original setups are always the result of something that feels real and evokes sympathy, which is what makes the show so uniquely and painfully hilarious.
By contrast, the scenes in “How to Lose Friends”—Sidney ruining a party by bringing a pig on a leash, or coughing so hard that he spits a large wad of food onto a woman’s white jacket (without her noticing, naturally)—are so manufactured, outlandish, or cliché that they lose their link to reality and irritate rather than amuse.
There are some mildly interesting plot twists involving the identity of Alison’s boyfriend and the emergence of Lawrence, Sidney’s immediate superior, as a convincing villain. Likewise, the always-engaging Bridges, in a loose play on legendary Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, is entertaining—though in truth this may be due more to his mesmerizing gray wig than his actual performance. And when the buffoonery shtick is kept to manageable levels, even Pegg produces some amusement—particularly when trying to convince fellow partygoers that “Con Air” is the finest movie ever made. But these moments are only funny in a fleeting, peripheral way, and they lack the bite that a comedy with such satirical aspirations requires.
Only one scene in the film felt truly comedic. Sidney sees the trailer for Sophie’s award-winning new movie, “Teresa: The Making of a Saint,” in which she plays a young Mother Teresa whose heart is torn between her love for a priest and her desire to help the poor. The trailer immediately provokes laughs because it raises the question that all moviegoers must ask at some point: “Why would anyone make this?” Unfortunately, this query applies all too readily to “How to Lose Friends” as well.
—Staff writer Jessica R. Henderson can be reached at jhenders@fas.harvard.edu.