CINEMA: How To Lose Friends and Alienate People

For the first time since Shaun Of The Dead, the normally bankable Simon Pegg fires a bit of a dud here. It’s not that this is a particularly bad film, it’s just it is not particularly good either.

Based on the autobiography of British hack Toby Young – who sailed off to America to make his writing fortune, only to return with his tail between his legs – it documents the failing fortunes of Sidney Young (Pegg), journalist around London town who is invited to join the staff of ultra cool New York magazine Sharps by its editor Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges). Obnoxiously arrogant Sidney thinks he’s the bee’s knees and will soon have the literati and even the glitterati of the Big Apple falling over his every word. In fact they can’t stand him and the only friend Sidney makes is the magazine’s art correspondent Alison (Kirsten Dunst), while his utterly oily boss (Danny Huston) despises him.

While Sidney is making an utter prat of himself you may find yourself having to suppress a yawn because there’s nothing duller than watching someone in a privileged position take it all for granted and show no appreciation for the cushy life they’ve got. While The Devil Wears Prada (again about a journalist trying to break into a closed world) worked because Anne Hathaway’s character was very sweet, Sidney is an obnoxious, pretentious, coke-sniffing dork, who doesn’t seem to actually do anything much (certainly not write).

Time for Pegg to return to Blighty and his own material in an effort to regain lost ground.      Dee Pilgrim