Based on the memoir of Toby Young, a British tabloid journalist who labored for a fateful spell at Vanity Fair, the new comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People bills itself as "a testosterone-laced The Devil Wears Prada," and not untruthfully. Like Prada, How to Lose Friends offers an inside glimpse at the high-stakes New York media industry, with Prada's obsession with fashion swapped for How to Lose Friends' obsession with celebrity. At the center of the story is Sidney Young, a British tabloid journalist who labors for a fateful spell at Sharps, a Vanity Fair–like lifestyle magazine with a negligible relationship to the basic tenets of journalism.

Cast as Sidney is Simon Pegg, the appealingly goofy English actor best known for the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead, who comes on here like a limey Jim Carrey, all in-your-face sass and booty slaps and flabbergasted handling of animals gone wild. Ultimately the Carrey comparison doesn't hold, as Pegg exudes none of Carrey's repellant compulsiveness, and after a bumpy first half hour, Pegg's Sidney calms down into something close to an empathy-worthy human.

Filling out the cast is a semidazzling mix of stars from old Hollywood (Jeff Bridges, as the would-be Graydon Carter), young Hollywood (Kirsten Dunst, as Sidney's coworker-turned-love-interest), and TV (Gillian Anderson, as a lusciously twisty PR maven). But despite the star power and tantalizing source material, How to Lose Friends never quite finds its footing. Presumably based on actual occurrences fascinating enough to fuel a best-selling book, the film too often strands our protagonist in situations straight out of Meet the Fockers. This encroaching formulism ultimately dooms the film, which stumbles into its final act as an if-you-say-so romantic comedy. But inside the processed goo, another, better movie is fighting to get out.