How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) poster
2008 · comedy · romance · drama

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

Directed by Robert B. Weide1h 50m2008
ElsewhereIMDb6.472kRT36%Metacritic35
  • brisk
  • gentle
  • intimate
Movie DNA

Warm, kinetic, gentle comedy / romance, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

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Sidney Young is a down-on-his-luck journalist. Thanks to a stint involving a pig and a glitzy awards ceremony, Sidney turns his fortunes around, attracting the attention of Clayton Harding, editor of New York-based glossy magazine 'Sharps', and landing the holy grail of journalism jobs. The Brit jets off to the Big Apple and moves from one blunder to the next.

Our read · How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) reads as a warm, kinetic, grounded comedy · romance · drama entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want sharp celebrity-magazine satire with Simon Pegg fumbling through Manhattan glamour.

ends warmyou’ll be fine aftersteady all the waygrips by minute 8attention 3/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upnuditycringe humiliation

Skip it tonightSkip if cringe party humiliation or magazine-world sleaze feels too awkward tonight.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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