The satire wears pampers

Purportedly, Toby Young, the author of the scathing How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, a memoir of his time in Manhattan at Vanity Fair, was banned from the set of his book's film version by director Robert B. Weide.

Young has carefully crafted a reputation for obnoxiousness, and, at first hearing of this set-side gossip, it was easy to imagine that Weide indeed found him "disruptive." However, having now seen Weide's finished product, no one could possibly blame the author for his intrusions, as the film of How to Lose Friends has completely missed the satiric tone and theme of the lad-about Young's work.

Obviously, trouble began before the cameras were switched on, as screenwriter Peter Straughan churned Young's memoir into something like a script a clef. Where Young names names, Straughan (undoubtedly with legal considerations foremost in his mind) rechristened everything with fictional names: Vanity Fair becomes Sharps, VF's infamous editor in chief, Graydon Carter, transforms into "Clayton Harding," while The Modern Review, which Young co-founded with Julie Burchill, folds under the name The Post-Modern Review. Even Toby Young becomes "Sidney" Young.

Weide's role, in what will become two wingless hours in the cinema, is, however, the most damning. As with Seth Gordon, the interesting director recently self-mired in Four Christmases, Weide is much better than this film reveals. Like Gordon, he's an accomplished documentarian, but he's also an astute producer, having long worked on Larry David's mordant HBO show, Curb Your Enthusiasm.

While there's farce to be found in Young's book, there is also skewering satire and not a little seriousness. Young, who even gleefully sends himself up in the text, is also a bit of a de Tocqueville manqué, a writer who possesses a clear-eyed view of American society and its customs.

Straughan and Weide miss most of this completely, and while the screenwriter is presumably the guiltier for larding the script with its virulently juvenile wit and sentimental claptrap finale, Weide obviously resigned his duty to steer the project toward the style and spirit of the source material. Rather than scarifying humor, we get cheap slapstick. One would expect more from a director who has created a number of excellent films on Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and W.C. Fields, not to mention someone associated with Larry David.

Considering David's screen persona - egotistical, difficult and socially inept - Weide, at first, seemed like a logical choice for this film, as Young possesses these same qualities, almost in commercial quantities. Yet Weide has transformed this enfant terrible into something terribly infantile.

As in the memoir, Young is lured to New York from London to work for one of the most powerful magazine editors in America. The young Brit's innate smugness and ignorance of the etiquette practiced amongst Manhattan's "glossy posse" insures his failure to either rise or impress within this world. Yet his daily faux-pas help pass him onto a level where he begins to see the city's ambitions and obsessions starkly for what they are.

Weide's interpretation manages to retain this kernel synopsis, though he's so fixated on trivialities that he abandons himself to splash in the shallows of Straughan's imagination.

This deeply superficial film yearns to be a boy's own The Devil Wears Prada, to the point of referencing both Lauren Weisberger's roman a clef, as well as the superior film spun from it. But the soured Clayton Harding (regardless of Jeff Bridges' work in the role) is no Miranda Priestly (Weisberger's wicked portrait of Vogue's powerful editor, Anna Wintours, devilishly brought to heels by Meryl Streep).

The idea of casting Simon Pegg as Young seems inspired enough. The two men could easily play the twin Dromios in a bus-and-truck Comedy of Errors, as Pegg boasts a similar physiognomy as Young. It's a look akin, as Private Eye memorably described Young, to "a peeled quail's egg dipped in celery salt."

Pegg is also a marvelous comic actor, as shown in the films he's made with director Edgar Wright: Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. But we're given a rather square Pegg in How to Lose Friends. Pegg is best with dead-panning. He is not a natural pratfaller or impish prankster, as Weide imagines Young to be at our cost, and so Pegg's character becomes merely a vain bumbler, bereft of any feature that might stir an audience (quickly sinking into mortal boredom) to care.

To add further insult, Straughan and Weide have also scissored Young's pages into romcom Valentines. So Pegg is paired with a love interest played by Kirsten Dunst, an actor who has labored unceasingly to prove that she cannot act.

Other than wasting Bridges' time, Weide has also squandered the use of Danny Huston and Gillian Anderson, the only cast members to bring some small life to the screen. There's even a brief glimpse of the excellent British actor Fenella Woolgar, though she is only given three short lines - a career blessing in disguise.

The cult of celebrity, scabrous gossip and frightening entitlement lanced like a boil in Young's memoir are hardly dealt with, save for the inferences one can make from this nonsense's brazen use of Fellini's La Dolce vita. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People somehow went from being a title to a mission statement. Were I Young, I would have crashed the set again.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at
ssilvis@praguepost.com