How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003)

Stars: Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson

Director: Donald Petrie

Plugs: Too many to count.

Review posted Fri Feb 7 13:32:08 2003

Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson of Almost Famous) is a columnist at a women’s magazine in New York City. Andie is relegated to writing fluff pieces on cosmetics, dating, and fashions, though she aspires to write about important issues such as politics and religion. Her editor makes Andie a deal: if she turns in a dynamite column, she can then have free reign to write whatever she wants. Andie decides that her ticket to serious journalism lies in writing a true-life column in which she hooks a guy into dating her, then (over the course of ten days) making all the classic mistakes that women make to drive men away: a sort of “how not-to” guide to dating. Andie ends up meeting Ben Barry (Matthew McConaughey), a low-rung advertising man with an agenda of his own: to win a bet and make a girl fall in love with him in that same ten days. This is the ridiculous plot set-up for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is remarkably uneven in tone. The first third is a mildly amusing (if wholly contrived) set-up. The middle third has some funny moments, as Andie is by turns clingy, mercurial, irrational, pouty, and an embarrassment to Ben in front of his buddies. But the sleazy undercurrent of the premise keep the real laughs in check: under the smiles, both of these people are casually and cruelly using each other. The film dictates that they are falling in love, but for the most part all we are shown is a girl trying to be as nasty and unpleasant as she can to a guy she is presumably really falling in love with.

Call me a romantic, but I’ve never really enjoyed films in which people emotionally exploit each other as part of a game or bet (such as 1999’s Cruel Intentions and 1988’s Dangerous Liaisons). Not only is it a tired cliche (college guy bets his buddies he can bed the local babe), but I personally don’t find watching people pretending to care about each other for bets, fame, or money entertaining. (Though I appear to be in the minority, if the ratings for shows such as Temptation Island and The Bachelor are any indication.)

The final third of the film is a generally disastrous jumble of romantic comedy cliches and awkward moments (in one desperate scene, Ben and Andie sing “You’re So Vain” to each other at a swank dinner party, each warbled word laced with misplaced righteous indignation at having been deceived). I’m not sure what was supposed to go on there, but whatever it was must have read much, much better on the page.

Director Donald Petrie made some poor choices (aside from agreeing to direct such a thin, worn script); for example, he shot Kate Hudson through soft filters when she was to look especially beautiful or romantic. Hudson is about thirty years too young for the gauzy Robert Redford / Liz Taylor treatment, and the effect is both distracting and unintentionally comic.

Hudson and McConaughey are both likeable leads, but it’s hard to tell if they really have chemistry; much of the time Andie is so over-the-top with histrionics or making Ben’s life miserable that they don’t get around to being real with each other. Also, I didn’t believe for a minute that Andie was interested in the “important issues” of the day; for a supposed graduate of Columbia in journalism who rails about her interest in the world, she showed zero knowledge of (or interest in) anything outside her bubble. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is an utterly predictable film adapted from a marginally cute novelty book of the same name. Try How to Lose an Audience in 120 Minutes.

© Benjamin Radford