How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (PG-13) ★★★

You gotta love love, especially when it's devious, deceitful, selfish, brutal, manipulative and shared between two such cute comedic talents as--Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey?

Story

In any romantic comedy, the ending is something of a forgone conclusion, and in this case it's cheesed out to the max with soft focus lensing and cheap, repetitive dialogue. With that criticism out of the way, the fun of How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days is in how the story gets to its inevitable and overplayed climax--and this one's a doozy. Andie Anderson (Hudson) and Benjamin Barry (McConaughey) are two ambitious young creative types. She's a columnist for Composure magazine assigned to write an article about how to lose a guy in 10 days--and she has to do it by perpetrating every dating atrocity known to womankind on her gullible guy. He's an ad exec aspiring to leave beer and sports equipment accounts behind in favor of luxury items like diamonds--and the only way he's going to get there is to win a bet with his boss by making a girl fall in love with him before the big pitch to the client, a diamond consortium, in 10 days. Andie does everything she can think of to make Ben (aka Benny Wenny, Benji, Muffin, etc.) fall out of love with her, while Ben's effort to make her fall in love means he tolerates her every girlie invasion of his life, from chick flick marathons to Vagisil in the bathroom to a Celine Dion concert on the night of the MBA finals. The result is an ever-escalating joke that the audience is in on from the outset, and it works. Of course, I'm a sucker for romantic comedy, and if you can give it a quirky twist, so much the better, I say.

Acting

Hudson and McConaughey have marvelous chemistry in this film, and you'll love watching them make out, make up and generally make each other's lives a mess. McConaughey's such a convincing Casanova that it's easy to see why Andie can't resist Benjamin, and even his plotting and manipulations are tinged with a Southern charm that's impossible to fake and easy to love. Hudson, too, plays her dual role charmingly, capturing the Sex and the City coolness of her character's ambitious side while really letting it all hang out as she tries multiple maneuvers to make Ben drop her like a brick--including calling his mother, leaving 17 messages on his answering machine in about 17 minutes, and buying him a little doggie with a diamond collar and a penchant for peeing on the pool table.

Direction

Director Donald Petrie's How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, based on the book by Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long, succeeds because it makes it easy for us to see ourselves in the roles of the leading characters. How many women have sent a potential Mr. Right running for his manly life by calling too often, too soon? I can't think of any that haven't. How many men have stuck around in spite of it? Probably not as many as we'd like, but certainly enough that we believe the possibility. And that's really the trick to a good romantic comedy: it has to make us believe that we all have a shot at the fairy tale--at true, deep meaningful love--without seeming like a fairy tale itself. The movie has to make us believe we have this chance in spite of--even because of--the obstacles in love's path, since in real life they are myriad and often overwhelming. But it's not just the women who can live the fairy tale in this film--men will appreciate the fact that the real Andie Anderson is a rowdy Knicks fan, a ravenous eater of bacon cheeseburgers and a fantastic card player. And what guy wouldn't want to identify with McConaughey (who, incidentally, takes his shirt off to great effect at least twice in the movie)?

Bottom Line

Despite its unbelievable climactic scene (which involves a karaoke version of Carly Simon's hit ''You're So Vain'') and overwrought ending, How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days is a romantic comedy we can all love.