Posted: 08/12/2009 |
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 How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days(2009)by Laura Tucker | |
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We can’t always control who we fall in love with. We know that. But we also can’t control who we don’t fall in love with, just the same. It should be noted that when we’re talking about Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, you certainly can’t control it. Hudson and McConaughey find that out for themselves in How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days.
Benjamin Barry (McConaughey) works for the advertising company as well, and over dinner with his boss (Robert Klein), Spears, and Green, he says he can make any woman fall in love with him. They make a bet, and set an upcoming party for one of their accounts, a diamond company, as the deadline. It just happens to be ten days away. If Ben wins the bet, he’ll get to be in charge of the diamond company account. Spears and Green see Andie walk in and tell Ben she’s the girl he’ll have to fall in love with, realizing there will be two conflicting bets going on. Once Andie and Ben get together, she spends her time trying to push him away, and he spends his trying to pull her closer. While she makes him get up to get her a Coke in the final seconds of a Knicks Playoff game, he lets it go. While she brings over matching Burberry clothing for herself, Ben, and the Chinese-Crested Dog she leaves at his house, he wears the shirt, and puts up with the dog peeing on his pool table.
In the bonus materials following the movie on the DVD, talking with the makers of the movie was most interesting. The writers, Jeannie Long and Michele Alexander, that wrote the book the movie is based on talk about how they conceived of this story while they were talking about the book The Rules, and felt they must always do the opposite to not be able to hold onto guys that long. The producer, Lynda Obst, mentions that when they were writing the movie and conceiving the character of Ben, her son told her they were writing it all wrong. If they wanted some really macho character, they needed to let a man write it. The end result is a success. It’s a romantic comedy that speaks to both sides. As horrible as the things are that Annie does to push Ben away, for some reason women really do do that to a certain extent, and that’s what sets up this storyline. It’s something everything can relate to. We’ve all fallen in love, even when we didn’t want to. And of course, we’ve all loved and lost, sometimes even in ten days. How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on August 18. Laura Tucker Laura Tucker is the webmaster of Reality Shack, and its accompanying Reality Shack Blog, and is a freelance writer providing reviews of movies and television, among other things, at Viewpoints. She is also an Associate Instructor and 2nd dan black belt in tae kwon do with South Elgin Martial Arts. Laura can be reached at LauraBelle@realityshack.com Got a problem? E-mail us at filmmonthly@gmail.com |
Hudson stars as Andie Anderson, a journalist at a fashion magazine, “Composure”, an obvious ripoff of 
By the end of the story, Andie and Ben just couldn’t control how they felt about each other. It didn’t matter what tricks she played on him, and how much he overlooked them. Whether or not they fell in love was going to be determined about how they felt about each other, not bets and tricks. And I have to add, while I can’t speak for how men feel about Kate Hudson, I can only imagine it’s the same as myself and other women that just can’t help falling for Matthew McConaughey.