An aimiable enough romantic comedy based on Toby Young's memoir detailing his stint at Vanity Fair. Simon Pegg - all flailing limbs and pratfalls - plays Toby, here offered a job at the fictional celebrity magazine Sharpes, run by media legend Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges). Desperate to land a date with glamorous up-and-coming actress Sophie Maes (Megan Fox), Toby is paired up with sober junior editor Allison (Kirsten Dunst) with whom, of course, he's destined to fall in love with.
Knowing where a story is going doesn't have to be a problem if we enjoy the journey but, although likeable enough, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People is almost completely devoid of both laughs and charm. A cast of such good actors (and Megan Fox) are ultimately unable to do much with the limp material (including a dead chihuahua, a transsexual and a Polish landlady), although Kirsten Dunst again shows how good she can be even in middling rom-coms such as this. Even if the ending was a bit of a cop-out, at least The Devil Wears Prada had a bit more bite to it...
