This movie is bulls***!

How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days

Director: Donald Petrie

Cast: Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, Bebe Neuwirth, Kathryn Hahn, Michael Michele

Released: February 7, 2003

Viewed in theaters: April 20, 2003

Remember back in the early 2000s when Matthew McConaughey was in all these awful romcoms like The Wedding Planner, Failure to Launch, and Sahara? (Well, Sahara was more of an adventure romance). This movie is no exception to that list. It is just terrible! 

Kate Hudson plays Andie Anderson and McConaughey places Benjamin Barry (the screenwriter sure likes alliteration...but so do I!). Andie lives in New York and is a writer for a fictitious Cosmo-like magazine called Composure. Andie's column is a "How to" column: "How To Talk Your Way Out of a Traffic Ticket", "How To Make Your Butt Look Good", etc. She would much rather write about things that are more important like politics, economics, and religion! She has no time writing about make-up tips and clothes and dating advice even though she goes out with her friends to gossip about her dating life and has an array of great designer clothes, bags, and shoes. Gimme a break, this girl couldn't give a crap about religion, economics, and politics! Her boss (Bebe Neuwirth) tells her perhaps she can choose what topic she wants to write about when she delivers a stellar piece.

She gets the idea for the "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" column when her friend and fellow co-worker, Michelle (Kathryn Hahn), gets dumped by her boyfriend of one week. She doesn't understand because everything was going so well and even cried with emotion the first time they had sex. Andie is going to find some poor schmuck to date and drive him away with all the cliche mistakes women make to drive men away (being too clingy and needy, calling all the time, talking in a baby voice, making him do things he doesn't want to do). Now I'm thinking, What woman is going to see the headline "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" and think, Oh, I need to read that because I want to get rid of the guy I'm dating! If you really want to get rid of a guy you're dating, you don't need to read a damn article on how to do it! It's not that hard! And Andie Anderson is at amateur hour here...please, ten days? Give me one day! Hell, give me two hours! Ten days is the given number because her boss wanted to give her a week to establish a relationship and the next issue was going to press in eleven days. Maybe if the article was called "How to Keep a Guy for More Than 10 Days", then I could see it being beneficial. 

Ben is an advertising executive who wants to pitch an ad for a diamond company. His co-worker, Judy (Michael Michele) is also trying to get a deal with the same company and thinks she will be a better fit for the gem that symbolizes love because Ben's relationships never tend to go on beyond a couple months. Ben says he can make any woman fall in love with him (because he has a charming Southern accents and looks like Matthew McConaughey) and Judy tells him if he can do that, then she'll back out of pitching her idea and let him have it. She tells him she'll pick out the woman for him to charm. Well, wouldn't you know, Judy had been at the Composure offices earlier that day and knows about the article Andie is writing and Andie is with her friends at the same bar trying to find a guy she can date and drive away. 

After they introduce themselves, Ben takes Andie out for dinner on his motorcycle and then back to his place. Um, there is no way in hell I would go on a motorcycle with some guy I just met, I don't care if he looks like Matthew McConaughey! I would probably end up dead as I don't know what kind of driver he is! Maybe Andie should write an article called "How To Not Go On a First Date"....which is the most awkward sounding title ever! They just seemed to move really fast, but I guess they both only have ten days to push the other person away/make the other person fall in love with them.

Now if Ben didn't have his own bet going, he might have stuck with Andie for a few days because she's an attractive blonde and he might have overlooked her being annoying at a basketball game when she asked him to get her a drink at the last minute of the game (and I was amazed that he didn't spill a drop of it when he sprinted back to her because that thing was FULL!) and then makes him go back because he didn't get Diet, but by the time she starts in with the baby talk and interrupting his nights where he plays poker with the guys, he would have gotten rid of her. Even if those didn't deter him, he definitely would have sent her packing after she shows him a scrapbook she created with photos of their children - she had pasted photos of their faces onto the bodies of children. It was sooo creepy! Anyone in their right mind would have gotten the hell out of that relationship! Not to mention the fact that she was calling his mother and chatting with her without his knowledge!

Naturally, Ben is getting fed up with Andie's behavior and does end it, but just when Andie thinks she's done her job, he suggests they try couples counseling. Andie gets Michelle to pretend to be their therapist and she suggests they visit Ben's family in Staten Island for the weekend. Why this will bring them closer together, I have no idea, but it does and do you know what happens that nobody could have possibly predicted in a thousand years? (Yes, that was sarcasm!) They fall in love! Imagine that! We know this because Chantal Kreviazuk was crooning "Feels Like Home" as Andie and Ben made love for the first time in the shower of his parents' home bathroom. Yes, you read that right. 

Andie tells her boss that she can't write the article but her boss tells her she has to because the cover has already been printed and has the article title on it. There's no going back now! She and Ben both attend an event that is being held by the diamond company Ben is trying to get a deal with. They have all their diamonds on display and women are allowed to go up and try anything on and wear it for the rest of the night. They do have security guards everywhere, but I find it hard to believe any random person could just go up and wear these diamonds that cost thousands of dollars. Andie finds out that Ben was only dating her to use her for a deal and Ben finds out that she was only dating him for an article. In the most amusing scene of the movie, they both sing "You're So Vain" - neither of them can sing it correctly and are both horribly off-key.

Andie writes a very heartwarming article about how she fell for the guy she was planning to lose in ten days and quits her job to head to Washington to look for something with more substance, but Ben, after reading the article, stops her and confesses his love for her and she stays in New York to be with him. Such a terrible, piece of crap movie!

Oh, and they play the cardgame, bulls*** in the movie, so that's where I got my title for this review!