Star rating *** Dir: Robert B Weide With: Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Jeff Bridges
Such is the frenetic style of this comedy, based on the memoir of celebrity-fixated journalist Toby Young, a better title might have been something bright and sleazy such as Confessions of a Wordsmith, or Carry On Up the Red Carpet. Don't worry: with Curb Your Enthusiasm's Robert Weide directing and Simon "Hot Fuzz" Pegg starring, you're in safe (almost too safe) comedy hands, missus.
Young's journey from the back-bedroom world of The Modern Review in London to the interior designed environs of Vanity Fair magazine in Manhattan ended in disaster, but rather than slink away he wrote a witty memoir which became a stage play and is now this film.
Peter Straughan's screenplay distances itself from Young's book with a few name changes (Toby becomes Sidney, etc), a lot of artistic licence and some sharp comedy writing. The first half, as Sidney describes how he made it from being just another chancer to inside the red rope, is a lot of fun. Many a navel-gazing meeja type will look on it and wince. Though Young is thoroughly obnoxious, Pegg makes him seem a likeable cove, a vulgar version of Bertie Wooster. "Our very own idiot savant without the savant," as a colleague describes him.
It's not much of a story to string out over a feature-length film, which is where some overworked slapstick, a weak sub-plot involving a friendship with a colleague (Kirsten Dunst), and tussles with a dastardly publicist (an on-form Gillian Anderson) come in. The joke runs out of puff as the film slogs onwards, but the leading man stays on winning form. Unlike the character he plays, Pegg shows he really can take Manhattan, Hollywood, and anywhere else he chooses.
