slickstu

Playfully riffing off the title of Dale Carnegie's classic 1936 self help manual, How To Win Friends and Influence People, Robert B. Weide's film of Toby Young's memoirs follows Sydney Young (Simon Pegg), a British celebrity trash journalist who somehow finds himself employed by a high class glossy New York tabloid magazine presided over by hard-arse, Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges). Naturally the Blighty upstart, who turns up to his first day at work wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with "Young, Dumb & Full Of Come", doesn't quite fit in with the plastic butt-kissers of NY high society and largely predictable shenanigans result.

Relentlessly poking fun at the vacuous self-important China dolls and pretty boy preeners of the "beautiful" social hierarchy, Weide's film remains charming and mildly amusing throughout. It's a shame that it rarely fires on all cylinders, though, as it coasts through its disappointingly predictable narrative and a series of set pieces whose connection with reality is tenuous at best (considering it's based on a memoir).

Simon Pegg and Kirsten Dunst deliver their usual likeable, charming performances; of course, Jeff Bridges is an institution unto himself; and Megan Fox portrays a pretty but pretty talentless rising Hollywood starlet with little effort.

Covering similar ground to The Devil Wears Prada, How To Lose Friends seems to be striving for a greater level of sophistication, but the fact is that Prada (due largely to Meryl Streep's razor performance) is the more pointed satire on high society publications. Nevertheless, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People is still mostly good fun.

7 out of 10