How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days Review

Things to learn from "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days":

Lesson 1: How to make a film with Matthew McConaughey: First, make sure you have an established actress to play the female lead. Then you convince her that though he has gotten overshadowed by so many other women in his films, there is still scope for her to mow him down. Remember him in U-571? No? How about The Wedding Planner? See, now you get the picture. He is great at playing second-fiddle.

Lesson 2: How to ensure your film gets a bumper opening: Target the women. You may think that alienates the men, but that only shows that you do not think at all. After all, aren't men putty in women's hands and do what they are told to? Or do you want Ekta Kapoor to tell you that?

Lesson 3: How to effortlessly come up with a story: Buy yourself DVDs of films like "Pretty Woman", "Runaway Bride", "Maid in Manhattan", "You've Got Mail", etc. Then sift through the comic part and work on the tragic ones. To make it 'original', incorporate some stuff like having your heroine Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) work as a writer in some women's mag called 'Composure'. Give her a boss whose only desire is to increase the circulation so that she comes up with this innovatively inane idea of dating a guy and doing to him things that all guys despise, the idea being for her to get rid of him in ten days.

Lesson 4: How to cross the one and a half hour barrier: Contrive a sequence (in other words, watch another chick flick) to get Andie to meet Benjamin Barry (Matthew McConaughey), who has also been given this trite task of making a woman fall in love with him if he wants to work on this ad campaign for some diamond company. This neutralises Andie's efforts to put him off with Ben's efforts to turn her on.

Lesson 5: How to add that twist: For this, watch What Women Want to know what they actually don't. Armed with this knowledge, you could easily get Ben to take Andie to his parents'. There she would be overwhelmed by his changing the baby's diapers, the love of his family for her (turn of Bollywood to sue Hollywood for copyrights?), and other yadda yadda. To complicate it a little further, let them do 'it' once they get back. Now you have the audience guessing the end.

Lesson 6: How to devise the climax: Get drunk, or better still, get sloshed. Since you have already seen The Wedding Planner, just change the wedding to a corporate party for the launch of diamonds. Spill all the beans through acquaintances of the protagonists and have them split up. But wait, the best is yet to come. Ben reads Andie's column and realises that she is the one for him. Airport sequences are out (even "The Parent Trap" had it, sort of). Improvise. And voila - a freeway chase wherein Ben on his bike chases Andie in her cab (is Mahesh Bhatt listening?).

Lesson 7: How to "learn the language" Friends' Speak: Just say OMG as many times as you come across something you have seen before, albeit in a different manner each time. If you think you are becoming repetitive (you will lose track in the first twenty minutes), just observe the women around you. Your girl will provide you with one more way of saying it.

Lesson 8: How to not watch a mushy-mushy film: Dump your girl.