20 years ago today How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days showed us how fun it is to watch two terrible people fall in love with each other. These are the favorite stars of a romantic comedy Keith Hudson And Matthew McConaughey. They play Andy and Ben, two attractive but obnoxious loners who manipulate each other and play mind games for ten days, accidentally falling in love in the course of a surprisingly interesting story.

What is the movie “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” about?

Kate Hudson as Andy and Matthew McConaughey Ben from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days look at each other
Image via Paramount Pictures

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days follows Andy Anderson (Kate Hudson), a writer with her own advice column in a popular women’s magazine. Self-control. Tired of being limited to fashion and relationship advice, Andy wants to be taken seriously as a journalist and write on more serious topics such as politics and international affairs. When her friend and colleague Michelle (Katherine Hahn) gets dumped after he said “I love you” just ten days after starting a new relationship, Andy tells a story where she will date a man and try to drive him away after ten days, doing all the faux pas that women usually make in relationships. . Her boss accepts the offer and even promises Andy to let her write whatever she wants if the article is successful.

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Andy’s experiment doesn’t quite go as planned because the man she’s targeting is Benjamin Barry (Matthew McConaughey), an advertising executive who bets he can make any woman fall in love with him in 10 days. Seeking to broaden his horizons from the beer and sports ad campaigns he usually spearheads, Ben sets his sights on an ad campaign for a major diamond company. His rival Judy SpearsMichael Michel) and Judy Green (Shalom Harlow), who learned about Andy’s experiment after visiting self-control earlier in the day, select Andy as the woman Ben should try to charm in an attempt to sabotage him and secure the campaign for himself.

Why How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days Works

Andy and Ben’s conflicting intentions lead to a series of jokes during which Andy becomes a caricature of a woman in desperate need of a boyfriend while Ben tries to woo her. Andy is intrusive, intrusive, and overly emotional, while Ben is suave, romantic, and malleable. Andy tries his best to drive Ben crazy and break up with her, but he refuses to back down and continues to put up with her increasingly erratic behavior. But things get complicated when Andy and Ben begin to develop real feelings for each other. They share a common love for the New York Knicks, and in the moments when they drop the game and actually get to know each other, they discover how compatible they are. When Ben takes Andy to meet his family, who welcome her with open arms, she realizes she can be above her head and Ben wonders if he can leave with Andy. And diamond campaign after ten days.

Andy and Ben’s goals may be unethical, but How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days based on a sense of nonchalance that makes their questionable actions easy to overlook, in no small part due to the chemistry between actors Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. There is a certain inspiring quality to the film as a whole - two young, wealthy New Yorkers who look like Abercrombie and Fitch models take each other on expensive dates, culminating in a lavish ball hosted by the diamond company. This makes the final reveal a little more enjoyable. Andy and Ben both used each other for personal gain, so the deception seems less sinister than other romantic comedies with similar premise such as 10 things I don’t like about you or She is everythingT, where only a woman is betrayed.

The iconic scene where Andy sabotages Ben’s speech and forces an impromptu duet performance of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” encapsulates the good and bad of their tumultuous relationship. Now that all the cards are on the table, they publicly embarrass themselves in an attempt to get back at the other. The choice of song is especially fitting, as their vanity is what got them into this situation in the first place. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days proves that sometimes watching hot people mess with each other is all you really need from a good romantic comedy.