Bob Weide’s bouncy adaptation of Toby Young’s adventures at Vanity Fair is a blast of fun. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People is a Rocky Horror Picture Show for every journalist on the planet. Simon Pegg plays the young hot-shot British reporter who drops every office clanger in the book in a deranged attempt to ingratiate himself with the all-powerful editor of Sharpsmagazine, Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges).

Pegg blunders through the film like Shrek. His ability to shoot himself in the foot at editorial meetings is almost too improbable. The romance between Pegg and Kirsten Dunst’s deeply sexy arts correspondent is the stuff of fantasy. The film has none of the self-lacerating pain of Young’s book, but as an exercise in humiliation it is second to none.

15, 106 minutes

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