How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008)

Directed by: Robert B. Weide | 110 minutes | comedy | Actors: Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox, Gillian Anderson, Kelan Pannell, Janette Scott, Thandie Newton, Jeff Bridges, Miriam Margolyes, Charlotte Devaney, Danny Huston, Margo Stilley, Isabella Calthorpe, Hannah Waddingham, Diana Kent, Max Minghella, Ashley Madekwe, Jane Perry, Bill Paterson, Kelly Jo Charge, Christian Smith, Katherine Parkinson, Felicity Montagu, John Lightbody, Miquel Brown, Nathalie Cox, Sam Douglas, Gillian King, Emily Denniston, Lisa McAllister, Julia West, Connie Wheeler, Lara Edmunds, Andy Lucas, Alexandra Aitken, Liat Baruch, Sarah Mennell, Eivind Karlsen, Ian Bonar, James Corden, Fenella Woolgar, Chris ODowd, Hugh Thompson, Emily Thorling, Allan Lidkey, Robert B. Weide, Nathan Nolan

What is there to say about this movie? That it is not genius, but entertaining, although certainly below expectations, or not really? Because the expectation of a Hollywood entrance is that it will all be a bit more average. And Pegg’s debut on the Hollywood mattress certainly lives up to that expectation. What’s missing here is just his other half, Nick Frost. It takes some getting used to without him, as if Stan Laurel is trying to make it without Oliver Hardy.

The story of the film is suspiciously similar to Pegg’s own story. Because he also did things for himself, together with Frost, with his own ideas and own resources, quite successfully too. But he was only too happy to be brought into the capital of film country, where it all happens, didn’t he? Inevitably, the clichés he liked to portray in the past (including the hilarious ‘Shaun of the Dead’ from 2004 and the equally funny ‘Hot Fuzz’ from 2007) arise irrevocably: too beautiful women, necessary well-known names, a simple, well-known story and genre buyers, such as the romantic thread in comedy. A thread spun around him and Kirsten Dunst here. A strange combination you would say, but it has to be said: it does work. Dunst has the gift – supported by the make-up and costume departments, of course – to be both very pretty and very ordinary, whatever she plays and is here. The build-up to their rapprochement is fun, but in the end it loosens up a bit.

In fact, the film really collapses when the romance starts to take over. Is it all still sharp in the beginning and Sydney (Pegg) throws, quite hilariously, like a kind of Theo van Gogh on the American corporate morality of licking your soul and selling your soul to climb to the top, once the love story starts to take shape, it becomes it’s all braver and duller.

By the way, the title ‘How to Lose Friends & Alienate People’ is not entirely correct. It may sound nice, despite its length, but it indicates more what the film could and/or should have been: a wonderful satire à la Monty Python, the way it starts, but certainly doesn’t end, unfortunately. Plus, Sydney doesn’t have any friends in the movie, so how can he lose them? But this aside.

Just a few more strong points: the costumes (sandals with socks, white English legs and a Hawaiian shirt), some jokes, like that joke about ‘Con Air’, Sidney’s character, which is carried out nicely consistently, all in the first part from the movie. Pegg himself is actually not crazy at all, but just like Sydney he doesn’t seem to suit America (yet), or better: America doesn’t suit him. Maybe he should visit his British buddy again and make his own (preferably satirical) film together, that would be better. It’s just not in it for the time being, because Pegg continues to look ‘higher’ in Hollywood. His next role will be Scotty in the new Star Trek, perhaps under the motto: How to lose fans and alienate them?