How To Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008)

Is it just me or is there irony in the fact that there are so many films centered around the emptiness of fame? Another film I recently reviewed, Shortcut To Happiness, revolved around a man in the dumps of life looking to success to bring him happiness, only to realize that true happiness rested in the simplicity of life. Now How To Lose Friends & Alienate People centers around a man looking to grasp fame and finding it not to be at all what he was looking for when he finally had it. Hollywood's either admitting fame isn't all it's cracked up to be or only revealing the insanity of those who are content in leading empty lives for the sake of "fortune and glory", either way it's quite clear that fame and money isn't the answer to happiness.

Simon Pegg plays Sidney Young, who as a child was always fascinated with the world of movies, he believed somewhere there was a shangrila were all the celebrities gathered and he wanted to be apart of it. At an older age Sidney began spending most of his life attempting to gain entrance into that Hollywood paradise by creating a small magazine and doing whatever he could to crash all the shows and parties in hopes of becoming one of the "in crowd". But all Sidney received for his trouble was the fame of disgrace by being rejected and kicked to the curb by some of Hollywood's elite. That is until one evening when Sidney crashed a party being thrown by Sharp magazine. The Chief editor Clayton Harding found Sidney's antics and determination amusing, and offered him a job at one of the world's most recognized magazines. But Sidney would quickly learn that being an annoyance would not advance his career very far in the world of big time publishing. The only way he'd succeed is by doing exactly the opposite of what he'd been doing all his life, he'd have to suck up to the talentless hacks that he used to slam.

I was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed this film, considering it was a certified bomb in the box office going from being shown on about 2,000 screens to 20 in two weeks. I don't understand it, why spend an estimated 28 million dollars on a film, never promote it and then pull it from the theaters within two weeks? How To Lose Friends & Alienate People has a full roster of talented actors and actresses who put forth good performances and Megan Fox as eye candy as the up and coming ditsy actress (probably not much of a stretch for her). But most of the film's entertainment undoubtedly comes from the star Simon Pegg, who in recent years has made quite the name for himself in American cinema. If your not a fan of Simon Pegg then it's pretty unlikely you'll find anything of interest here as Pegg is pretty consistent in playing the same type of dopey character, but if you are a fan expect nothing less than the same entertaining shtick your used to seeing with him.

Overall, my only concern before watching this was with the R-rating, I was unsure if this would be another crude comedy full of expletives and nudity. Well it has a little of each, but surprisingly not as much as I thought there might be. Personally I'm not a fan of the recent fad of "crude comedy" as I've stated many times before, I don't particularly find 40+ F-bombs and massive amounts of nudity entertaining and really don't understand how it supposedly makes a film funnier. Luckily How To Lose Friends & Alienate People manages to straddle the line and not go too overly out of control, but it's still nothing suitable for a younger audience, which is a shame because they could have easily cleaned this film up and made it PG-13 without making the film any less entertaining.

8/10