Matthew McConaughey rides the motorcycle of love. Join him as he chases the formerly cute Kate Hudson down the 405 in How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
How to Lose a Guy is another romantic comedy about people with cooler lives than you who spend all their time whining about wanting to get ahead. To make the grade, two complete strangers make two different bets and end up dating each other for all the wrong reasons. Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) is in it to make Benjamin Barrie (Matthew McConaughey) miserable. A “how to” column turned experiment, she has ten days to make him love her and then make him so miserable that he leaves. Ben, an ad executive whose name is nearly as sickening as Andie’s, gambles that he can make Anderson fall in love with him, a wacky ploy to get the big pitch that he’s been working for.
Like any solidly melba-toast rom-com, How To relies heavily on the charisma of its actors to keep the audience awake. For McConaughey, charisma is a snap, coming as naturally as his perpetual and inescapable Texas drawl. Hudson however seems to have lost much of the spunky shine she built her name on just a few years back in Almost Famous. Granted, this isn’t as dreadful a performance as that foisted upon us last year in the box-office plummeter Four Feathers, but cuteness has escaped her. Hudson now seems mostly awkward and out of place. Chemistry between she and Matthew is non-existent, as is our belief in their growing and wacky romance.
It isn’t as if there’s nothing chuckle worthy in How To, it’s just that most of the best stuff you’ve seen in TV advertisements. The rest is a lame attempt at heartwarming filler that barely manages to create an atmosphere qualifying as run of the mill. That’s a shame, because even though I’ve given up on Hudson, I maintain that McConaughey has real on screen talent, and could do better than to waste his time languishing in retreaded romance flicks like this or last year’s slightly more watchable Wedding Planner.
Even in this, McConaughey makes for fun watching in what is basically just more of the same stuff you’ve seen in every other artificially sweetened date flick. Throw in yet another ending where McConaughey ends up chasing his lady love on a motorcycle with some of the worst use of good 90’s rock in recent memory and all you have is another harmlessly blah trip to the tired out filler of the rom-com movie trough.
