Painful to watch

Rating: Null/10 (30 May 2004)

While I usually enjoy romance comedies and would consider movies such as `Sleepless In Seattle' and `You've Got Mail' to be among the best movies that I have seen, I have noticed that they seem to have deteriorated recently in terms of both the acting and the storyline. `How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days' would probably have to rank as the worst movie in any genre that I have seen for a significant period of time.
For a good romance movie/comedy to succeed it needs a good script, a good storyline (which even if predictable still contains enough substance to keep the viewer engaged), chemistry between the main actors, a strong supporting cast and flowing dialogue. It also has to make you laugh and make you feel good. In some cases the presence of one of the above features is so strong that it cancels out the lack of the other characteristics and makes the movie a success regardless. The problem with `How to Lose A Guy In 10 Days' is that it lacks all of the above characteristics.
The storyline contained in this movie is not only exceedingly predictable but contains all the clichéd characters and twists that have been recycled time and time again in romance movies and novels. There is nothing new to keep the viewer engaged you can predict almost every minute of the movie as it unfolds. You can see the ending from the beginning and there are no surprises.
The script writing is equally bad. The character development is unrealistic and weak, the dialogue clichéd and stilted, the jokes very unfunny and needlessly crude and everything down to the costumes and scenery is out of place in the movie. The only thing going for this movie is the music and even then it is quite often much too high quality for such a weak film.

It is still possible that all this could have been offset by excellent acting by both the main players and the supporting cast. And I'll give Matthew McConaughey credit he does give a star performance and provides his character with a considerable amount of depth and believability despite the bad script and weak dialogue. The rest of acting, however, is of a poor quality (this most probably is not the fault of the actors but rather of the script) and makes the movie even more painful to watch. It's hard to feel any degree of sympathy or empathy for anyone in the movie which goes against the whole idea of these types of movies and quite frankly the acting and the characters in the movie were downright annoying and made me want to turn off within about ten seconds of beginning to watch the movie.
This is a poor attempt at a movie in this genre and is exceedingly boring, weak, predictable and lame. Out of a rating of 10, I would give it a -5 and it's only that high because Matthew McConaughey's acting rescues the film from being a total disaster and nightmare