How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days
Paramount Home Entertainment   -   2003   -   115 minutes

Reviewed by Kyle Crawford

Review Date: June 30, 2003

FOR STARTERS

PHOTO GALLERY Romance is in the air as Andie and Ben meet

I went into watching this feature with not the greatest of expectations. When it first played in the theaters most critics had roasted director Donald Petrie's romantic comedy as derivative, with a tired and unrealistic plot device. Perhaps, then, that is why I enjoyed How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days so much. Stars Matthew McConaughey and, especially, Kate Hudson jump out in their roles and chew up the dialogue. You can tell they had a lot of fun filming this movie and they have a tremendous amount of chemistry together. Despite the fact that the film takes place in a perfect world, where men and women get to pick up on one another for their job duties and an office day consists of several rounds of nine-ball or group meditation, the film works (maybe it's just because I want to live in that world). If you check your brain at the door and just roll with it, you too will have a good time.

Andie Anderson (Hudson) is the successful "How To..." columnist for Composure magazine. As her friend is dumped yet again, she concocts the premise to her next piece, "How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days." Her goal is to do all the wrong things that women do in relationships to drive men away. Benjamin Barry (McConaughey) is a top man at a successful New York advertising agency. His firm has just landed the DeLauer Diamond Company account and his boss (Robert Klein) has decided to give the account to the two Judy's, the top women at the firm. Refusing to settle for this edict, Ben makes a wager with the women, betting that he can make any woman fall in love with him in, you guessed it, ten days.

Andie and Ben then begin a whirlwind anti-romance where Andie does sadistic things like send Ben for a soda with five seconds remaining in a playoff basketball game or scrapbook a photo album with younger pictures of the two pasted together with images of what their kids will look like. Hilarity ensues as Ben tries to hang on to the relationship for dear life, after all he has a bet riding on this. The looks of disgust on Ben's face are priceless and every guy who has ever been in a relationship can sympathize. For a guy's point of view some of the scenes are almost painful to watch. The cat and mouse game that the two leads play is a delight.

While this film does not tread over any new ground, it is an awful lot of fun getting there. The ending is typical for a movie of this type but at that point, who cares? McConaughey and Hudson sizzle on screen and I hope that they do many more movies together. Director Petrie, of Miss Congeniality and Mystic Pizza fame, has done a nice job with this script. My sole complaint is that Adam Goldberg and Thomas Lennon are sorely underused as Ben's best friends, otherwise a nice two-hour reality escape.

VIDEO

Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days offers a pleasant picture. Director of Photography John Bailey at times chooses to frame the scenes with a soft focus, this is especially evident in scenes with Kate Hudson, which can be distracting. Overall, color detail is quite good. Black levels are okay, a couple of evening scenes wash out a touch, but the contrast tends to be pretty good. Interiors are nicely lit and there is a bit of very minor edge enhancement present. Not a reference quality transfer, but as with most newer films, the print is free of nicks and grain, and shows virtually no compression artifacts.

AUDIO

Being a romantic comedy the audio track doesn't blow you away. Dialogue is up front and clear as you would expect. The subwoofer track doesn't get much of a workout and the rear surrounds are minimally used, save for city noises and the soundtrack. All-in-all an okay audio presentation. A Dolby Digital 2.0 surround track is also included as well as a French 2.0 track.

SUPPLEMENTS

Paramount Home Entertainment has provided a nice amount of supplements on this disc starting with a feature-length commentary by director Petrie. It is a pretty straight forward audio track, but Petrie is quite engaging while talking about his stars' chemistry as well as highlighting all the spots where Kate Hudson ad-libbed (which is surprisingly quite a lot). Next up we have 5 deleted scenes with optional director's commentary. These play out okay, fleshing out the political article that Andie hopes to publish is one of the scenes, but you can see why they were cut. There is also a featurette entitled Mapping Out The Perfect Movie. It is broken up into 15 different parts with the first seven focusing on the different characters and the actors portraying them, and the final eight focusing on the crew. Next is an interesting feature called Mapping Out The Perfect Location, which is basically a visual map of New York City with 10 clickable locations. Once you click a location, a short video clip plays describing the production design about that location. And finally, the Keith Urban music video, "Somebody Like You" is included as well as three previews; the theatrical releases of Lara Croft 2, The Core and the upcoming dvd release of The Indiana Jones Trilogy. This is a nice complement of supplements.

THE BOTTOM LINE

How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days isn't great cinema but it does have it's charms. A stale plot device is helped considerably by the on-screen chemistry of Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson. If you're a fan of either lead this is definitely worth a purchase, otherwise rent the disc, grab a date and a bottle of wine, and sit back and enjoy a couple of mindless hours of romantic entertainment.