Release date: 3rd October 2008

Getting Toby Young and the time he spent tying to crack the New York world of glossy magazines right could have been tricky, but Simon Pegg manages it perfectly in a film that effortlessly satirizes the journalists and flacks who work in that industry.

If you haven't read the book and want to see the film, then read no more because this post, as they say, contains spoilers. I should maybe have mentioned that yesterday when I blogged about the US presidential election and 'The West Wing' as unbelievably someone complained about my ruining the ending of that (the show finished two years ago for crying out loud).

'How to lose friends and alienate people' is Toby Young's book about his brief spell working in New York for Vanity Fair, after he co-founded culture magazine The Modern Review, and now a film directed by Robert B. Weide of 'Curb your enthusiasm' fame and starring Pegg as Young.

The film does much very well. It places the modern slightly laddish Englishman in New York and among New Yorkers and each comes away disappointed. Pegg's Young is disappointed in what he finds, in those shiny magazine towers, filled he finds with celebrity impressed American journalists, and in turn, New Yorkers are less than impressed with the English journalist's antics - his boozing, uncouthness and lack of style. It doesn't help that he turns up on his first day in a t-shirt emblazoned with the Modern Review's most famous headline "Young dumb and full of come". It's not a hit.

This, of course, isn't really Toby Young. As unlike him it is really difficult to dislike Simon Pegg. From his first moments on screen until his last he isn't playing Young, but Playing Pegg. What we get served up is a variation on the character seen in 'Spaced', 'Shaun of the Dead' and (skipping 'Hot Fuzz') 'Run Fat boy Run'.

Young leaves behind the confusion and pending closure of the Modern Review after a call from Clayton Harding, Jeff Bridges, editor-in-chief of Sharps magazine standing in for Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair.

The sometimes sozzled, and always smoking, Bridges as Harding is a cracking performance of the editor in middle age whose anti establishment days are far behind him. This is where Young enters hired by Harding out of some nostalgia, but his attachment to that past is almost completely overshadowed by his relationship with the PR industry and celebrity.

This offers the chance for a fine performance by Gillian Anderson who plays uber flack Eleanor Johnson. It is Johnson who wields ultimate power controlling the celebrities and making magazine careers out of fluffy PR approved copy.

I watched this film in audience filled with women who work on glossy mags and there was definitely some nervous laughter at some of the targets, which are taken out one by one: the stick thin models, the clothes, the flacks, the copy approval and the life of fakery that passes for celebrity journalism.

Young initially rebels against this life and laughs at his American colleagues who include eventual love interest Alison, an as ever likeable Kirsten Dunst, and mocks his boss Lawrence Maddox, a sleazy Danny Huston.

But while he mocks he still desperately wants in and that's the dilemma. He wants to date skinny models/actresses/whatever, but to do that he has to be on the inside and that means selling his soul.

But after suffering his stories being spiked and threatened with losing his job, it looks like it is all over and it has to be after a drunken performance at a party in the Hamptons when high on booze and drugs Pegg delivers a hilarious performance as he turns into a drunken Ingerland singing Englishman with a memorable shoutout "come on Orlando you used to be English".

From this car crash, somehow he saves himself and from the ashes he rises, swallows his pride (without too much difficulty) and embraces the world of celebrity. The promise here is some kind of moment with the object of his affections: the hot young rising star Sophie Maes, played perfectly by Megan Fox (of 'Transformers' fame) who just happens to be all of the above.

In months Pegg's Young is feted and sought after. He is on the inside track and looks set to claim his prize.

There are a few moments when the film missteps (the fake movie that Maes is the star of being the biggest, it is simply "too" bad), but there are many more entertaining moments to enjoy. In end this it is a romcom, and the courtship between Pegg and Dunst is cute and funny with few road blocks, and thus it ends.

Gordon MacMillan
Editor
Brand Republic