How to Lose my Interest in 10 Minutes

Rating: 4/10 (30 April 2004)

Bear in mind that I'm not categorically opposed to chick flicks. As far as I'm concerned, "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Titanic" were watchable movies. But to me, chick flicks are movies that are best watched with a girlfriend. If I'm alone, they are definitely not my cup of [herbal tea] coffee. This movie pretends to be something other than a chick flick, but when it comes right down to it, it's about as predictably chick flick-ish as "What Women Want."
Matthew McConaughey plays the ambitious and manipulative advertising executive who makes a bet that he can make Kate Hudson [the senior prom queen!] fall in love with him in order to win a diamond advertising account. Kate Hudson plays the ambitious and manipulative reporter whose job it is to snag a guy with charm and sweetness, turn into a psycho hose beast to make the guy dump her, in order to write a story called "How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days." So they manipulate! They scheme! They play charming and sadistic mind games with each other! Neither one of them knows they're being played like a violin! But, get this... they both really have hearts of gold and despite all of their machinations, they fall for each other!!
And I'll bet nobody who watched the movie could've guessed that would happen!
Oh, don't get me wrong, there's a few mildly funny bits, like when Hudson names McConaughey's member "Princess Sophia." At which point McConaughey objects that it should be called something more masculine, such as "Krull the Warrior Barbarian" or some such thing. But most of the gags just didn't strike me as funny. Yappy dogs that pee on pool tables are not funny, because pool tables are a serious business. (Heh!) Pretending to weep in a restaurant while telling the waitress and other ayngry lookyng womyn that your boyfriend thinks you're fat, when you are obviously built better than a statue of Aphrodite is not funny either. The elderly wife of a diamond executive flirting shamelessly with McConaughey was more yark-inducing than a bottle of ipecac. Maybe a lot of other men or women found this stuff to be hilarious, but I've read funnier installments of Hagar the Horrible in the Sunday Comics section.
The cliches are sprinkled throughout the movie like rice at a wedding. You've probably seen the Scheming Reporter With The Heart of Gold in other movies, such as "Mr. Deeds" or "The Hudsucker Proxy" among others. And for the love of all that is holy, why does Hollywood keep resurrecting The Bet That Goes Bad plot that should have stayed dead with "She's All That" and "Not Another Teen Movie?!" I dunno, but these plots are like randy zombies that keep rising from the dead so that they can skull**** you over and over and over again.
Naturally we have the revelatory scene where He Learns She Is Tricking Him, and She Learns He Is Tricking Her. Kate Hudson doesn't exactly get to be prom queen, but she gets to wear an outrageously expensive diamond necklace that reminds you of a scene in "Pretty Woman." After they find out they've been tricking each other, they have a duet where they extemporaneously sing accusations at each other that reminds you of a cross between "Ally McBeal" and the trash-talking from White Men Can't Jump. Okay, maybe I'm reaching a little too far for my analogies here, but screw it, I'm tired.
And finally there's the obligatory chase scene: "Oh my God she's moving to Washington, so now he's got to chase her cab on his motorcycle before she gets to the airport to let her know he loves herrrrr!" Trust me, you've seen this scene played out in a dozen teen and adult romantic comedies, and it's utterly missable here. McConaughey reads Hudson's magazine article "How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days" which is so saturated with sugary pathos that it will definitely remind you of Drew Barrymore's newspaper article in "Never Been Kissed."
Now you may be thinking "If you had such a low opinion of this movie, why did you watch it until the end?!" And I have a great answer. It was because I wanted to see how many times I could catch this movie ripping off another movie. And besides, I felt like an ambitious reporter taking notes at the scene of a really bad plane crash. I really couldn't have cared less whether handsome Matthew and pretty Kate got together or whether they died in a freak accident involving high voltage electric eels. Actually, the latter would have been a more interesting ending. The irony of it all is that the movie beats you over the head that Matthew and Kate are playing a game of 'bull****' with each other by having Kate visit Matthew's parents where they actually play a card game called Bull****! Man, I never would have gotten the message if it weren't for the card game...!
So my final score for this movie is 4 stars out of a best possible 10. And since I took the time to write all of this up for my blog, I thought I would go ahead and vent my annoyance with this movie on IMDB. You know, as a public service.
I mean, not everybody enjoys a game of Bull**** played this badly.

~Sly