How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

Andie should be living the dream – she’s got a job in New York City, working as a columnist for a flashy magazine – but her manager is controlling, and she feels bored, unsure, and unseen. In a last-ditch attempt to explore her creative potential whilst boosting her status in the publishing industry, Andie is struck by inspiration and decides to conduct an experiment to see if she can “lose a guy in ten days.” Her plan: to make someone fall in love with her – and then leave her – before the deadline is up, so she can write about the dramatic encounter in her magazine. But when business-man Ben enters the picture with his own secret intentions, things don’t go quite as smoothly as Andie was anticipating. In the best way, this film is bonkers – and that’s exactly why How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days has become such a comfort watch. Starring the wonderfully goofy Kate Hudson, alongside everyone’s favourite, Matthew McConaughey, not only is the film straight-up fun, it’s very charming and so madly 2000s that it’s impossible not to love (and that’s even if the characters – Andie Anderson?? Benjamin Barry?? – do have some of the most insanely alliterative names I’ve heard!).

Martha Gibbs

Kate Hudson plays Andie Anderson, a columnist for a women’s magazine who wants to break political stories, but is instead compelled to report on make-up and shopping. She is promised the chance to write about the stories she cares about if only she can nail ‘How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days’ - an article about the things women do to alienate the men they love and drive them crazy. To research for her piece, she must find a guy and using ‘classic’ relationship faux pas, get him to dump her in a mere 10 days.

Her subject is Benjamin Barry (McConaughey), an advertising executive who, in an attempt to land a prestigious account at his firm, makes a bet (unknown to her) that he can make Andie fall in love with him in 10 days. Will he be able to make Andie fall head over heels? Or will she be able to scare him away? Ben tries to hold on to Andie while she does everything in her power to annoy him. You will find yourself laughing out loud at some of the cringe-making things she does to the poor guy. She is clingy and moves way too fast. She invades his weekly poker game with his buddies, tricks him into taking her to a Celine Dion concert and amongst other highly amusing things, digitally superimposes their faces to make a family photo album, complete with fantasy children. It’s fair to say that in real life, most men would have run a mile as a result of Andie’s efforts after the first day, but given the goofy set-up, Ben is unrealistically understanding. Hudson and McConaughey are well cast as the leads in this movie. They have an amazing chemistry and as they begin to really like each other, there are some engagingly sweet and romantic scenes. Hudson twinkles as the delightful heroine of this film - she is beautiful and yet impish, while McConaughey easily charms completely as the handsome leading man, playing the kind of guy that most women would love to date.

The fact that this movie cleaned up at the boxoffice proves its appeal - it succeeds where most rom-coms fail, managing to be incredibly funny without being too cheesy, as well as being spine tinglingly romantic. If you’re only going to watch one romantic comedy this year, make sure that it is this one.

Julie Ngo