Glowing, adorable girl is set up with glowing, Southern screen idol in a whirlwind romance complete with deceit, lies and bad acting.
“How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days” provides plenty of eye candy — if star Kate Hudson develops some acting talent, she could easily become the next Julia Roberts — but not much along the lines of a believable story.
Andie Anderson (Hudson) is a how-to columnist at Composure magazine, a thinly-veiled Cosmopolitan rip-off. After her coworker is dumped for the umpteenth time because she came on too strong, Andie comes up with a brilliant idea — she’ll pick a guy, do all the annoying things women do that drive men away and try to lose him in 10 days.
In an attempt to make the story interesting, she’s matched up in an evil plot with Ben (Matthew McConaughey), an advertising executive who, if he can prove he understands women by making someone fall in love with him in 10 days, will land an important diamond company account.
The film is a logical outshoot of the reality marriage shows that won’t stop coming on network TV. Somehow, society has become obsessed with the idea that two people can fall in love in a week or a month — that the Bachelor can meet his Bachelorette from a small pool of pretty women.
But the very premise of this movie is flawed. How is the audience supposed to know Ben is really falling for Andie when the gimmick is he’s only acting like he’s in love with her? Here’s why — traditional romantic comedies work that way.
Andie certainly isn’t very lovable for the duration of the movie. For about two seconds during a Knicks game, she gets adorably excited and it’s plausible Ben would fall in love with her; but otherwise her only redeeming quality is she’s gorgeous.
This would have been a perfect candidate for a romantic comedy to break all the rules, and let the story end without true love prevailing.
Here’s what should have happened — Andie pursues Ben with the assumption she won’t get emotionally involved. Instead, she’s led to believe Ben is an incredibly understanding guy who is so in love with her he’ll put up with her zaniness, and she falls in love with him. She tells him, then he fesses up to the scheme and admits he’s not really attracted to her. In an ideal movie, she is punished for subjecting a poor guy to her antics for the sake of a column. He is made to feel like an ass for breaking her heart, all over a business deal.
But no, the audience is not only forced to believe McConaughey and his family, Southern accents and all, are from Long Island, but also that Ben clung to that two-second shred of hope that Andie is actually an enlightened, interesting catch.
The supporting characters, who for some reason only come in pairs, are incredibly one-dimensional. Andie’s two cohorts at Composure couldn’t have had a hard time memorizing their lines — they can only keep parroting “Andie, I can’t believe you’re doing this!”
While watching the two women who set Ben up to fall in love with Andie, one can’t help but think of “The Little Mermaid’s” slimy barracuda co-conspirators, Flotsam and Jetsam. The women are models in real life, and they can’t break their vacant stares, they never leave each other’s sides and their lines are delivered with an evil venom.
Even Composure’s editor, who has the potential to be interesting, doesn’t waver from her “get me my story” attitude the entire movie.
As for the audience members who sit through this movie till the end — those poor, unfortunate souls.
