How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days | Jacquie Kubin reviews, Action, DVD | DONNE TEMPO
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
You find yourself really caring for these people as the table rapidly revolve on their thoughtless escapades only to find themselves falling tragically in love and looking like real buffoons as they need to come clean with their original motivations.
Which were very egotistically driven and way far away from falling in love. Their hubris allowed them to believe it would never happen.
So of course it did.
Putting our female lead behind the keyboard once again (why are they always journalists, why?), Andie Anderson (Hudson) works for Composure Magazine writing a “How to” column for a publication whose look and content is all Cosmo.
Ben (McConaughey) is the “Alpha Male” – young, single, smart, kind, and very nice to look at. He is also a successful ad man completely oblivious to the stares and sighs of the women around him.
Andie wants to be a serious newswoman. Not fashion and feng shui, but politics and world governments. She is frustrated and unfulfilled.
Ben, on the other hand, is king to his sports and beer clients, but he too wants to expand his horizons by bagging the DeLauer Diamond account for his ad agency showing his chops go beyond “guy” stuff.
Trying to convince his boss, Phillip Warren (who is adroitly played by Robert Klein), Ben hijacks a meeting between his agency nemesis’, Spears (the lovely Michael Michele) and Green (the cool and beautiful Shalom Harlow) and Warren boasting that he knows women, and diamonds.
Which leads to Ben’s proclamation he can make any woman fall in love with him in time for the DeLauer Diamond party – which is in ten days.
Fortuitously, Andie is in the same chic upscale bar with her best friends, Michelle (Kathryn Hahn) and Jeannnie (Annie Parisse) searching for the right guy. The plan, makes this guy fall for her, only to chase him away and destroy their relationship with all those things “women do” that make guys run quickly for their bachelorhood.
All for the sake of an article to be titled “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.”
The premise of the film is condescending and rather insulting to the women of the world who are not slightly psychotic, cloying, needy and desperate for a man, however stand out performances by Klein and Bebe Neuworth as Lana Jong, Andie’s stylish, focused and oh so Anna Wintour (Vogue Magazine) editor make this film well worth watching.
Hudson and McConaughey with their comedic timing, incredible good looks and plenty of onscreen chemistry keep the film enjoyable while performances by supporting casts members Hahn and Parisse for Andie and Adam Goldberg as Tony and Thomas Lennon as Thayer, Ben’s significantly less alpha agency team, allow the viewer to watch along and enjoy the movie – even if it is a formulated rom com.
The Goods: Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey make a great team, and with the right scripts, could enter into annals of great film couples like Gable and Lombard, Tracey and Hepburn.. ok, maybe Lucy and Ricky or Rob and Laura, but they are great together. And dahling, they look marvelous!
The Bads: For some reason, within the extras they felt it made sense to bring the writers of the original cartoon book on and given them a considerable amount of time explaining the brilliance of the book. The book was not brilliant. The idea however was made for a romantic comedy and the screenwriters did a great job bringing that concept full circle.
The Mandatory Extras: The romantic comedy has been a movie stalwart since Marilyn Monroe and Richard Sherman created some serious sexual tension in 1955’s Seven Year Itch. Director Donald Petrie offers a rather interesting commentary on the film, explaining shot and location decisions and the process of creating a successful romantic comedy. The extra “How to Make a Movie in 2 Years” is also interesting, when the book authors are off screen. It is interesting to hear producer Lynda Obst discuss the films wardrobe process and her influence to the film.