How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Frequent Curb Your Enthusiasm director Robert B. Weide makes his feature directorial debut with this screen adaptation of British writer Toby Young's comedic novel of the same name. When self-promoting scribe Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) accepts a position as a contributing editor for iconic fashion ...more

Hordes of people gobbled the advice offered by Dale Carnegie in the best-selling self-help guide, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Sidney Young, the central character in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, surely wasn't one of them. The film is a shark-toothed satire about the cannibalistic world of high falutin magazine editors and celebrity culture, exposing the bought 'n' sold relationship between the media and the famous people they prop up. It doesn't sugarcoat the air kiss ...more

Based on the memoir by Toby Young, a British journalist who's made a career out of what he calls "negative charisma," How to Lose Friends and Alienate People lampoons the self-importance of Hollywood, the publishing world, and well, Toby Young (known in this roman à clef as Sidney Young). It pulls off this satirizing brand of comedy in some wildly amusing ways -- it's when the film abandons the satire that things start to drag. Simon Pegg plays the beguilingly obnoxious writer, who's running a ...more