Kerry Brown/MGMReview in a Hurry: A sarcastic, iconoclastic, English celebrity news muckraker (Simon Pegg) gets a job at a prestigious New York fashion magazine and is stunned to discover that being a mouthy jerk doesn't quite cut it with U.S. celebrity publicists. Because this is a movie, he also manages to catch the eyes of both Kirsten Dunst and Megan Fox.
The Bigger Picture: Loosely based on the real-life experiences of British journalist Toby Young and his clumsy attempt to fit in on staff at Vanity Fair, Robert B. Weide's film changes the protagonist's first name to Sidney, with Jeff Bridges as Graydon Carter stand-in Clayton Harding, an eccentric boss not unlike a less homicidal version of his Iron Man villain (Irony Man, perhaps?). When Young's satirical U.K. paper is on the verge of utter collapse, Harding calls him out of the blue to offer him a job, despite or possibly because of the fact that the paper had recently made Harding a target of its barbs.
Determined both to live the high life and shake up the status quo, Young proceeds to abuse the privileges of the job and speak truth to power as he sees it in an industry where phony flattery is the essential coin of the realm. By the time he eventually learns how to play the game, of course, it turns out that success isn't all it's cracked up to be. So nice of big Hollywood stars to lecture the rest of us on how awful it is to have a huge paycheck and sex with models.
Still, despite the contrived story arc, it's undeniably fun to watch someone onscreen endlessly get away with irritating the bosses in ways most of us only wish we could. And while the story may not entirely resemble the real Toby Young's actual experiences, the oft-overrated Pegg is actually a perfect choice to portray him in all his sarcastic yet sensitive, um, glory. Oh yeah...Fox wears a wet see-through dress at one point, which should guarantee several ticket sales all by itself.
The 180—a Second Opinion: Readers should bear in mind that entertainment journalists, film reviewers included, rarely see movies made about our profession, and there's a good chance we may appreciate the inside references more than the general public will.