"The key to this game is being able to read people."
Ben (Matthew McConaughey)
When I was a boy, I had a big crush on Goldie Hawn. She was still young and beautiful in those days, had moved on from television work and had already won an Oscar in a still–nascent acting career.
Her daughter, Kate Hudson, co–starred with Matthew McConaughey in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," which premiered on this day in 2003. I would have regarded that title as an oxymoron if Goldie Hawn had starred in such a movie when I was a boy. I couldn't possibly understand why anyone wouldn't want to be with Goldie Hawn. I just thought she was so dang cute.
And, before I saw the movie, I found it pretty hard to comprehend about Goldie's daughter, too. Hudson looks a lot like her mother. She probably looked more like her mother a few years earlier when she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (for "Almost Famous"). Unlike her mother, though, she did not win the Oscar — and she hasn't been nominated for one since.
It was hardly surprising that neither she nor McConaughey was nominated for "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," considering that it had all the elements of a screwball comedy, which are audience pleasers but seldom regarded as Oscar material.
Except it couldn't pull it off.
Hudson was a how–to writer for a women's magazine. McConaughey worked for an ad agency. They were thrown together by work–related wagers. Hudson was doing research for a how–to in reverse — all about the things that women do to drive men away. McConaughey's wager, to make a woman fall in love with him in 10 days, was tied to his pitch for a multimillion–dollar account.
Egged on by their respective bosses (Bebe Neuwirth and Robert Klein) Hudson and McConaughey pursued their hidden agendas, feeding off each other with reckless abandon — until that inevitable moment when they learned the truth — you know, the just desserts payoff that defines the screwball or romantic comedy and essentially justifies all that has come before.
From this premise, I will admit, the writers came up with some clever angles, and I do know a few young women who consider "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" the greatest romantic comedy of all time — but that's really a stretch when you consider the truly great romantic comedies of the past.
Perhaps in the realm of the modern romantic comedy (roughly, the last two decades), it might be considered the best, but that is because romantic comedies themselves have changed in that time — and not for the better, in the eyes of some. Modern romantic comedies tilt rather heavily toward stereotypes that, by their definition, exclude chunks of the audience. Classic screwball/romantic comedies relied on truly bizarre circumstances that were not exclusive.
Weird things happen. Really weird things happen in rom–coms and screwball comedies.
For instance, more people could relate to Cary Grant's conundrum in "My Favorite Wife," in which his wife, who had been missing for seven years and was presumed dead, showed up just as he was about to remarry, than to Hudson and McConaughey, two upper–class, well–paid and well–educated young people playing mind games with each other.
And when they weren't playing with each other, they were watching the NBA Finals from practically courtside seats. Sometimes they killed two birds with one stone. Pretty unrealistic.
Of course, rom–coms have always been unrealistic. It is their exaggerated circumstances that usually make them work. But there are those who believe they have taken a darker turn of late.
I have read of the unhealthy effects of modern rom–coms on real–life relationships and how they interfere with people's ability to communicate with each other. That makes sense to me.
Frankly, though, "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" wasn't good enough, by those standards, to have that kind of influence on people.
I thought it was mostly silly — and, seen in that light, it may have been a worthy successor to the Rock Hudson–Doris Day flicks. Rom–coms are nothing if not silly.
But I really didn't feel that Hudson and McConaughey had that kind of chemistry.
Consequently, when their moments of comeuppance came, I found it hard to care. Their behavior may have justified those moments but not the two hours I invested in watching the movie.
(By the way award–winning composer Marvin Hamlisch made a cameo appearance during the comeuppance. I liked Hamlisch, and I suppose someone had to play such a role, but I lost a little of my regard for him when I saw him in this movie.)
Sometimes I wonder if that isn't expecting too much from a rom–com. The romantic/screwball comedy genre is and always has been escapism, and "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" delivered in that regard.
Mostly.
It had that light–hearted wink wink nudge nudge kind of humor that is so characteristic of such a movie, but, in this case, it struck me as almost sad the way these characters reeked of insincerity.
I guess the joke was that neither was sincere to begin with.
