It
may make no sense, but it's one of the many, many unwritten rules of
Hollywood film-making that a "Romantic Comedy" is somehow superior to a
regular, "Make 'em Laugh comedy".
So we get films like How to Lose Friends and Alienate People,
where what should have been a good - or even great - straight up comedy
takes a serious turn for the seriously mushy in the final act.
What makes it even more depressing is that up until then, the romance angle was extremely well-handled.
Sydney
Young (Simon Pegg doing a bang-up job as always) is a feisty,
muckraking UK journalist (and, to be honest, a bit of a dick) who gets
head-hunted to work for the high class Sharpes Magazine in the
US.
It's a new world for Young, one where publicists
control access to the big stars the magazine needs to survive and they
use that control to ensure they get favourable coverage.
Young,
on the other hand, prefers to sink the boots in, which doesn't impress
anyone he works with - least of all Alison (Kirsten Dunst).
And
so for a while what we get is a bunch of very funny workplace pranks
and blunders spiced up with some A-list glamour (having hot new actress
Megan Fox playing a hot new actress helps a lot in this regard) and
Pegg's quality face-pulling.
However, suddenly the simmering
romance between Sydney and Alison is shoved into the foreground, and
things go sour (as they must in all romantic comedies so the lovers can
get back together at the end) and this becomes the extremely thin
motivation for Sydney to suddenly throw aside his UK ethics in favour
of US-style suck-up journalism.
Before long he has got
everything but love, but as this is clearly one of those "I had it all,
then threw it away for love" stories, the ending isn't exactly hard to
spot.
It also makes zero sense when you think about it
for even a second - good thing the rest of the film is funny enough to
more than make up for it. 4 out
of 5
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People Australian release: 23rd October,
2008 Cast: Simon Pegg, Megan Fox, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges Director: Robert B. Weide Official Website:How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
