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Searching For Scoops | Simon Pegg is a reporter on the make and Megan Fox is his latest subject in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE
Directed by Robert B. Weide. Starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox, Jeff Bridges. Opens Fri, Oct 4.
**1/2

Oh, irony of ironies: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, a movie that ostensibly champions an obnoxious hack from a disreputable British street rag against the posh arse-licking glossy magazine establishment, not-so-secretly wants everyone to like it. Why else would it be so predictable and inoffensive?

The ever-watchable Simon Pegg stars as Sidney Young, an unscrupulous reporter who must resort to all manner of subterfuge to get close to the celebrities he covers, probably because his ploys tend to result in havoc (e.g., a pig running amok at a ritzy post-premiere party). When he catches the eye of Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), powerful publisher of a prestigious American magazine à la Vanity Fair, Sidney jumps at the chance to transplant to New York and join the party, only to discover that he’s starting well down the totem pole.

Not that he can’t fall even lower — his impertinent antics quickly get him in dutch with his new bosses and only the forbearance of untrusting co-worker Alison (Kirsten Dunst) saves him from prompt termination. Eventually Sidney figures out that allowing himself to be co-opted by big-time players like imperious agent Eleanor Johnson (Gillian Anderson) will gain him access not just to Hollywood stars but the barely concealed charms of rising ingénue Sophie Maes (Megan Fox). But is the price too high? Um, yeah.

How to Lose Friends is about as predictable as a movie can be. If you can’t triangulate its narrative arc from the above description, you simply must get out of the house more often. Director Robert Weide, best known for his close association with HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, might as well have hung placards around his actor’s necks, so obvious is their function in the predestined unspooling of the plot, which puts its various comedic elements to the most obvious of uses. We’re talking the whole magilla — poop, groin injuries, dead dogs and flagrantly inappropriate behaviour in social settings. It’s a real bonanza of one-off lowbrow gags.

What the movie really needs is a dose of the discomfiting humour Weide’s TV career is predicated on. Rather than a snarky but ultimately soft main character, it needs a Larry David type, one as self-absorbed and superficial as its glitzy setting, someone who can really kill a conversation by saying precisely the wrong thing and then loitering in the uneasy silence. Don’t get me wrong: Pegg is quite enjoyable in the role — maybe it’s that the script lacks the strength of its nasty convictions. Its treatment of the celebrity demimonde as a haven for undertalented, self-important assholes lacks real teeth, just as Sidney’s gross breaches of professional etiquette come off as frathouse pranks.

Like Pegg, Jeff Bridges is someone you always look forward to seeing in a movie, but the role of the

crusty, disappointed-idealist publisher doesn’t have much meat on it and Bridges only manages to make him seem cranky. Dunst, all dimples and askew teeth, gets her contractually mandated scene of adorable drunkenness, which predictably puts her directly in the path of Pegg’s boyish charms. Only the unsung Danny Huston, as a smarmy, compromised senior editor, makes very much of the material.

If you haven’t had enough of the characters (or the ersatz pop-laden soundtrack) by the final credits, hang around and you’ll see a faux trailer for a film that’s a running joke throughout the movie. It’s not any funnier than the rest of the movie, but does make for a tidy summary of the way How to Lose Friends and Alienate People contents itself with easy laughs when it really needs to be a little more difficult.