Review
HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS
Starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey
Directed by Donald Petrie
Opens Friday, February 7
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Fashion magazines and romantic comedies have a lot in common: they’re both marketed almost exclusively to women and often feature the same stories repackaged over and over again.
Given this fact, it’s quite appropriate that the heroine of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days works at the fictitious "Composure Magazine," since the end result of this flop is about as enjoyable and informative as a snippet on manicures or orgasms that you might find nestled in the pages of Cosmopolitan.
Trolling the all-too-familiar territory of the gender wars, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days pits ambitious Manhattan journalist Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) against ad man Benjamin Barry (Matthew McConaughey) in a stereotypical battle of the sexes between star-crossed lovers. Eager to dig her teeth into some "real" stories and start writing about "things that matter, like politics," Andie agrees to devote her monthly column to a piece about the mistakes women inadvertently make that drive men away. Elsewhere in the naked city, advertising executive Ben takes a bet that he can convince any woman to fall in love with him – the wager is over a new diamond campaign for his firm.
So, wouldn’t you know it, the two schemers get paired up with each other. What ensues is a predictable onslaught of gags in which the irresistible sweetheart Andie turns herself into a manic, psychotic stalker in order to send the ever-amenable Ben packing. Beginning by dogging him with irksome behaviour (demanding a diet Coke in the closing seconds of a Knicks game and buying him Burberry button-downs), Hudson’s Andie quickly ditches the light approach and goes for a more brazenly insane one. She succumbs to speaking to her man in baby talk and carting over photo albums full of computer-generated pictures of their "children."
Of course, everything hits rock bottom when the swinging bachelor opens his medicine cabinet to see it stuffed with tampons and, gasp, Vagisil. Can it get any worse?
Like an episode of Seinfeld without the humour, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days works its mildly inventive premise for the approximately 10 funny minutes it offers up. Running on fumes the rest of the time, the abuse finally gives way to a canned romance sequence and the final blow-out.
Without enough chemistry from its leads, the film won’t last anywhere near 10 days in the minds of anyone unlucky enough to see it. |
