There are all sorts of people in the world that one's likely to encounter in their lifetime, but it's those with strong personalities that usually stand out the most. The best are the born leaders who meld confidence, charisma and a palpable can-do spirit that simply makes them fun to be around. In short, you often end up feeling better about yourself simply being in their presence and soaking up some of their positive vibes.
Then there are those best described as loud, not necessarily just in volume, but also or instead in terms of being overbearing. They're confident, but don't always have the right stuff to back it up. And while they rarely tend to be boring, they usually come off as boorish, especially if they don't possess some sort of charisma or other positive attribute to temper the negative ones.
Accordingly, people usually don't like to be around them, and the same holds true for those same sorts of movie characters. Of course, the latter often have the benefit of one or more screenwriters providing them with funny dialogue of one sort or another, a director who manages to elicit laughs both stemming from and aimed at them, and performers who manage to put just enough humanity into them to make them tolerable, at least to some degree.
Such is the case in the awkwardly but appropriately titled "How to Loose Friends & Alienate People." Based on the memoirs of the same name by Toby Young, a British journalist who landed a job at Vanity Fair covering the Manhattan set only to self-destruct due to his demeanor, self-proclaimed negative charisma, and various faux pas that made him something of a legend in those circles, the film is surprisingly funnier and more entertaining than I thought it would be.
While I like Simon Pegg (who plays a character based on Young) and Kirsten Dunst (as his coworker and only pseudo-friend), will watch anything with Jeff Bridges (playing Young's boss at the film's version of Vanity Fair, Sharp's), and certainly find Megan Fox fetching (she was the eye candy in "Transformers"), the previews for the film and the lack of any sort of appreciable buzz simply left me decidedly blasé about the offering.
Granted, it's no comedy masterpiece, but director Robert B. Weide -- working from an adaptation of Young's work by Peter Straughan -- gets some decent mileage and considerable laughs out of the "fact is stranger than fiction" story. It certainly doesn't hurt that Pegg ("Run Fatboy Run," "Hot Fuzz") is now an accomplished veteran at portraying cocksure but not entirely competent characters who bumble and fumble their way through any number of predicaments and character interactions.
Knowing next to nothing about the real journalist, I can't say how close Pegg is in, well, pegging the character verbatim, but he certainly knows how to play with the material and off his costars and supporting cast. Dunst plays the straight man character to his clown and is fine but otherwise unremarkable in the role, but Bridges nails his cynical publisher character. Supporting perfs by Fox, Gillian "Thank God It's Not the X-Files" Anderson, Danny Huston and Miriam Margolyes are all decent.
As a satire of all things celebrity, the film treads familiar waters (such as the movie trailer for an upcoming release that's so serious it's goofy -- this time a biopic about Mother Teresa's formative years) and doesn't really offer up anything particularly novel. And the third act, where the main character's most significant transformation takes place, feels far too rushed and thus unbelievable, while related behavioral revelations don't pack much punch simply because we've seen their type before and clearly see them coming here.
Nothing tremendous but capable of delivering more laughs and entertainment value than I was expecting, "How to Loose Friends & Alienate People" rates as a 5.5 out of 10.
![[Screen It]](/images/underground_header.jpg)