How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008)

The trailer enticed us, and, unlike many who posted on on imdb, Jack & I liked this farce. Englishman Simon Pegg, who wrote and starred in both Shaun of the Dead (2004), which I didn't see, and Run Fat Boy Run (2007), which we both liked very much, plays a Fat Boy-type character again: Sidney Young, an awkward loser trying to make it in a glossy city. Pegg did not write this one: How to Lose Friends is based on a memoir by Toby Young, a Brit who worked at Vanity Fair in New York for editor Graydon Carter. Here, Jeff Bridges plays Clayton Harding, editor of Sharps magazine, Kirsten Dunst the normal co-worker, Danny Huston the sleazy department chief, Gillian Anderson the conniving publicist, and Thandie Newton, who co-starred in Fat Boy, has a cameo as herself at a Hollywood party that goes terribly wrong. Too bad they couldn't also get Hank Azaria for this one, as he was seriously funny in Fat Boy. I'll admit How to Lose Friends was a little uneven, but definitely worth seeing. Apparently the strippergram scene really happened in Toby Young's life. As the credits rolled and the other 12 people in the theatre got up to leave, as they (not we) do here in the hinterlands, a faux-trailer appeared on the left side of the screen, and stopped the exodus. Very funny stuff. If you rent this, don't turn it off before you see that part.