Possibly the best movie that could be made about Toby Young that isn't rated NC-17.

A sharp-witted satire of celebrity journalism.

This film, directed by Curb Your Enthusiasm's Robert Weide, makes an entertaining companion piece to his book.

Feels jumbled and disorganized. It's not altogether unpalatable, but that doesn't present it from being a mess.

Pegg has some good obnoxious moments, but he's only a few movies away from becoming Dudley Moore.

Not as smart or as satirical as you might hope, but an enjoyable and often funny look at a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Best in show is the divine Gillian Anderson as a powerful celebrity publicist, editing the image of her clients in much the same way this adaptation tames Young's much pricklier book.

The result is an initially hilarious picture that grows perplexingly trite as screenwriter Peter Straughan transforms Young's sly observations into assembly-line pap.

It devolves too often into slapstick shenanigans and comedy of embarrassment.

When Pegg is breaking protocols with his uniquely ballsy aplomb, dancing like a doofus or doing battle with Venetian blinds, the film almost flies.

Gets muddled in slapstick and crude humor.

Unfortunately, both Bridges and Anderson are only intermittently in the movie. And when they're not around, How to Lose Friends loses its satirical edge, becoming an alarmingly safe, almost corny romantic comedy.

The putrid showbiz comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People appears to hit DEFCON 5 in mistaking its brand of moral laxity for cutesy irreverence.

Simon Pegg is likably smart and obnoxious as the fish-out-of-water Brit in high-gloss Manhattan, but he's swimming upstream in a feature that substitutes slapstick for scathing wit.