I had fun watching this movie, mainly due to Simon Pegg, who has quickly become a solid box office draw for comedy films.

He is hired from his dead end London publishing job by big shot NYC media mogul Jeff Bridges, as a writer, for one of his celebrity rags.

After paying his dues, he makes it into the higher echelons of celebrity writing hackdom (the "seventh room"), where he gets to be a minor celebrity himself. The storyline is very funny, and Gillian Anderson puts in an impressive supporting role as a cutthroat publicity agent.

Along the way to success, he finds the true meaning of love, etc.

The formulaic plot aside, the movie was very funny, mainly due to Simon Pegg, Jeff Bridges, and Gillian Anderson. Kirsten Dunst was good as the love interest. The rest of the supporting cast did its job well.

This was a good comedy & well worth checking out at the theaters.

Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) is a boorish, unlikeable, annoying, inappropriate, douche idiot A-hole. He crashes parties and ridicules famous celebrities in his London magazine. He gets noticed by Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges) and hired onto the glitzy "Sharps" magazine as the cultural editor. He tries to befriend co-worker Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) and win over starlet fame-whore Sophie Maes (Megan Fox).

Simon Pegg doesn't fit this character that well. Even in 'Spaced', he had a streak of likability. He's an adorable guy. It's a little better when he shows some vulnerabilities later in the movie. For a guy trying to show how shallow everybody is, he's the most shallow of them all. I wish they wade through some of his depths earlier in the movie. The other problem is that he has no chemistry with Kirsten Dunst. She's almost as hopelessly uncompelling as a character. The movie really struggles to find its way in this rom-com formula.

This film is based on the novel by the same name by Toby Young and is about his life in New York when he worked for "Vanity Fair" magazine. How close the book, this movie and reality are related to each other is something I do not know. I'd love to know if Young is really this thoroughly hateful and boorish.

In England, Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) spends his life trying to crash celebrity parties to get stories for his fledgling blog or magazine (I'm not sure which--nor do I really care). For no apparent reason, the editor of a HUGE magazine in New York (Jeff Bridges) calls Young and offers him a job. So, his years of crashing parties is over--with "Sharps" magazine, he now has entrée--albeit, it's at a very low-level job. Once in New York, Young pretty much alienates himself from everyone because he's a worthless, boorish and despicable guy. Folks with Asperger's Syndrome would be MUCH more adept given the same opportunity. Yet, again and again, he manages to say and do the wrong thing. Why a co-worker (Kirsten Dunst) eventually grows to care about him is inexplicable, as he gives them almost nothing to like. And, how this guy manages to eventually be a success is beyond me.

The problem is that the character of Sidney Young is so abrasive, so annoying, so shallow and so thoroughly unlikable that it just doesn't seem possible. He is possibly the worst person I've seen in a film that isn't Hitler or some other despotic world dictator. Heck, Freddy Kruger and Jason are more charismatic and likable than Sidney Young! Had they made him HARD to like instead of IMPOSSIBLE to like, it might have worked. Or, at least, it would have worked a lot better.

So, if Young is this awful, what else is there if anything? Well, not much. Most of the rest of the folks in the film aren't likable, either. Plus, you'll be assaulted with a lot of nastiness--such as the often use of the 'ol F-bomb AND a full-frontal she-male* nude scene (I did NOT need to see this). All in all, a film I kept HOPING would become better but didn't. A huge disappointment. And, it makes you wonder how very talented folks (such as Pegg and Kirsten Dunst) agreed to star in such an unlikable film.

*What is the best and most accepted way to say this? I have no idea but the person looked exactly like a sexy lady with male genitalia.