How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days
By KEVIN THANT
Two characters falling in love due to an exterior motive is one of the most overused tropes in the romantic comedy genre. But How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days remains a nostalgic favorite in most people’s hearts and was one of the most famous love films of its time.
The quote “All is fair in love and war” perfectly tells the whole plot. We meet Benjamin Barry, a man working in an advertisement agency who stakes his role in a major project on making a woman fall in love with him in 10 days. The other side of the story is Andie Anderson, a hotshot magazine writer, who has one more magazine article before she can write about her deeper interests. Coincidentally, the article is about how to lose a guy in 10 days.
Ignoring the major plot holes, like how you can even tell if someone has fallen in love, and using that to decide who manages your advertisement campaign or the fact that a fashion magazine would allow anyone to write on politics, it still creates an unlikely scenario that almost insults the viewer’s intelligence.
It would be horrible if How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days were not a rom-com, but we don’t watch rom-coms to overanalyze the plot. We watch these movies, which usually have shoddy plots and character development, because of how warm they make our hearts feel. They either create a yearning or make you appreciate the love you already have.
The movie does just that, which is surprising considering it lacks a star-studded cast if you ignore the two main characters. It takes a minimalist approach where two main characters run the whole show, and the director (Donald Petrie) executes this perfectly.
Benjamin Barry and Andie Anderson are both extreme perfections in their worlds. Barry is sought after by the ladies, athletic, and represents pure masculinity. Anderson is declared beautiful even by her colleagues and extremely intelligent. One can only wonder what their children would look like.
The shoddy plot that we dissed saves the movie from a perfect relationship that would have been a bore to watch. Andie turns almost psychotic to get Ben to leave, but because he has a major project at stake, Ben just keeps trying. They grow to love each other deeply after these shenanigans. But despite being funny at the start, the plot soon began to loosen with the repetition of the same joke over and over again.
However, Matthew McConaughey (Benjamin Barry) and Kate Hudson (Andie Anderson) save the movie with their chemistry. One cannot help but root for their relationship even though both have no intentions after their 10 days are finished.
When they visit Ben’s parents’ house, we see for the first time what their relationship could look like without the bet, and it’s picture-perfect. Their chemistry leads us to root for them, and even through the overused trope, we find ourselves glued to the screen to see if they end up together.
Their best scene is when they both find out. “You can never lose something you never had,” Andie says, leading them to walk their separate ways. It would have been good to end the movie there, but that ruins the perfect relationship we spent the whole movie rooting for.
The plot took a more convoluted turn when they miraculously ended up back together in a cliche taxi chase down. Despite healing our hearts, the ending confuses our brains. You can’t help but ask: “How did that happen??”
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is not a perfect film by any means. But it’s the perfect romantic comedy. You can’t replicate the magic of Benjamin Barry and Andie Anderson’s chemistry. If the point of a romantic comedy is to make you laugh and your heart yearn, then no movie does the job better.