Little White Lies magazine

Man walks into a bar. Sees a girl and an empty barstool next to her. He sits on it and shoots her a smile. “Sorry, my boyfriend’s sitting there,” she says. “Is he?” replies the man. “Well, he’s fucking small, isn’t he?”

That, unfortunately, is the only funny moment in How To Lose Friends And Alienate People. What a shame – particularly for lead-man Simon Pegg, whose immensely likeable and funny persona can’t seem to find a home on the big-screen when not writing his own material.

Pitched as ‘a testosterone-laced Devil Wears Prada’, this comedy is based on Brit writer Toby Young’s memoir about his five-year struggle to survive in a job at Vanity Fair magazine. Pegg is Young – Sidney Young, that is. And after mocking celebs and crashing parties as editor of mock-the-week rag Post Modern Review, he’s inexplicably hired by Vanity Fair proxy, Sharps magazine, and jets to the cutthroat glitz of New York.

But forget serrated wit and piercing satire. Instead we get pratfalls, worn-out sketches and showy bad language, all hung off the predictable arc that sees Young flapping like a fish out of water, selling his soul to climb the greasy pole and finally getting it back again to win the heart of co-worker Kirsten Dunst.

Thank goodness, then, for the Hollywood names – all class acts – who lift every scene they’re in. Jeff Bridges as Sharps’ jaded editor, Gillian Anderson as the ball-breaking publicist and Danny Huston as the arse-licking star writer. But the surprise winner here is Transformers rent-a-babe Megan Fox, pulling out a self-deprecating, funny turn as the bimbo starlet that Pegg’s sleazeball has eyes for.

It’s worth staying until the end, though, if only to see Pegg and Dunst struggle through the most uncomfortable, least passionate final kiss in the history of cinema.