Movie review: Funny man Pegg takes 'Friends' beyond formula

With his huge watery eyes, prominent cheekbones and pale face, Simon Pegg is an unlikely romantic lead. He's a crack comedian, however, and the funny guy does often win the girl in the end. In "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People," he plays Simon, an iconoclastic London journalist transplanted to New York. Much to his surprise, he has become such an important player in the magazine-PR-industrial complex that he's about to bed a starlet played by the unspeakably luscious Megan Fox. As noted, he's a funny guy, so this turn of events is one step short of science fiction.

Simon's improbable rise from ink-stained wretch to master of the glamourverse is the core of the story. It is constructed along the same ugly duckling lines as "The Devil Wears Prada," "The Nanny Diaries" or any number of other yarns with put-upon protagonists in fashionable surroundings. This time, however, it's the guy who gets the makeover and has the second thoughts.

Simon begins his journey as editor of the Postmodern Review, a fancy title for a snarky gossip rag. He spends a great deal of time trying to slither past the velvet ropes that separate celebrities from everyday folk like himself. He's rather ill-mannered, but his persistence is winning.

After he fails to penetrate a red-carpet film premiere by walking up with a pig on a leash ("It's Babe," he insists), he goes incognito as a waiter. He's seized by security, of course, and given the bum's rush. His drooping false mustache was a dead giveaway, but so was his body language. Simon skulks in the presence of the famous, as if he had no right to be there. When he's transplanted to Manhattan as the protégé of a revered magazine editor (Jeff Bridges in wise but weary mode), he gets a crash course in New York self-esteem.

The film has a respectable feel of craftsmanship that partly alleviates its bland anonymity. It's constructed from the stock parts used in a million earlier romcoms -- the grumpy ethnic landlady, the meet-cute with the romantically appropriate co-worker, the learning the ropes scenes, the snarky clashes with the office rival.

Despite the impersonal sameness of the material, it moves along at a good clip, rarely letting a one-note joke outstay its welcome. Pegg is adept at the foot-in-mouth humor that defines his character. He's wonderfully expressive. In a scene where his lowly status in the office hierarchy requires him to ignore the fact that an important personage has fallen flat on her face in front of him, you can read his entire thought process as he startles, hesitates, then walks right over her.

Gillian Anderson plays a sharklike publicist who corrupts Simon, offering him the interviews that will net him a cover story if he writes puff pieces about her clients. With her insidious assistance, he continues to fail upwards, eventually circling back to the moment when he is about to sleep with Anderson's hottest client.

As the rising star of the moment, Fox possesses a feral sexuality, pre-conscious yet instinctively all-knowing, like a stunning, innocent, carnivorous cat. Though he's been on a long, steady bonding path with wholesome co-worker Kristen Dunst, Pegg is magnetized by Fox's allure. Hence his crisis of conscience. Is he a wannabe or a don't-wannabe? There are enough nuggets of entertainment in the film to tip it to the positive side of the scale.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186