New York Times
"...The two stars, Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, have a prickly, hot-and-cold chemistry..." 02/07/2003 p.E19USA Today
"...Hudson is charming and her comic timing is dead-on..." 02/07/2003 p.13D Sight and Sound
"...There are some well observed moments in HOW TO LOSE A GUY....There's also some nicely understated satire about magazine publishing and digs at the shallowness of celebrity journalism....The supporting cast is strong..." 05/01/2003 p.50 James Berardinelli's ReelViews 6 of 10
Bubbly actress Kate Hudson has proven herself to be very good at one kind of role, but with a shockingly limited range. For a vivid example of this, contrast her wonderful work in Almost Famous with her one-note collapse in The Four Feathers. Fortunately, lightweight parts such as this one are well within her capabilities, and she acquits herself admirably as Andie. Matthew McConaughey makes for a decent match. His good looks deflect most criticisms about his acting ability. But the problems with this movie have nothing to do with the leads, or with the sporadic nature of the sexual tension between them. Instead, they're more basic. I would be among the first to argue that, in a romantic comedy, the storyline is not everything. The problem is that, in movies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, it's closer to nothing. - James Berardinelli
San Francisco Chronicle 8 of 10
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days gets off to a slow start, as if the plot were a series of heavy gears that had to be hoisted into place. But once the setup is assembled, the movie reveals itself as a laugh machine, with jokes building on jokes and situations escalating into higher degrees of comic absurdity. It's about as close to French farce as romantic comedies get, and the closer the better. In real life, romance is often fairly close to farce anyway. - Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Examiner 7 of 10
Most of the movie's charm stems from the chemistry generated by its two lead players: McConaughey has a pleasing knack for conveying frustration and consternation at various levels of amusing intensity, while Hudson takes delightfully shameless glee in doing her worst to drive away a guy who doesn't want to be driven... Add a few very funny supporting players to the mix--take note of Adam Goldberg as Ben's droll co-worker, and Bebe Neuwirth as Andie's velvet steamroller of an editor--and you have the kind of instantly disposable but exceptionally agreeable trifle that's best enjoyed with one's significant other, preferably before or after an intimate dinner for two. - Joe Leydon
ReelViews 7 of 10
One could easily make the argument that How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is a perfectly acceptable diversion. Kate Hudson's Andie Anderson and Matthew McConaughey's Ben Barry are both affable individuals and, when the script allows it, there are fitful sparks between them. Yet I can't bring myself to recommend the movie. Why? What's missing? Simple: the romance. This movie is so intent upon getting cheap laughs and putting the protagonists in uncomfortable situations that it forgets they're supposed to be falling in love. Even though they don't know it, we should be able to sense it. But it's not there. So when, in the dwindling minutes, the filmmakers recognize that a happy ending is needed, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days lets loose with a belated avalanche of hearts and flowers that radiates artificiality...From time-to-time, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days has a little flavor of War of the Roses, but the movie doesn't have the courage to go more than a little distance down the path traveled by the Danny DeVito film...Bubbly actress Kate Hudson has proven herself to be very good at one kind of role, but with a shockingly limited range. For a vivid example of this, contrast her wonderful work in Almost Famous with her one-note collapse in The Four Feathers. Fortunately, lightweight parts such as this one are well within her capabilities, and she acquits herself admirably as Andie. Matthew McConaughey makes for a decent match. His good looks deflect most criticisms about his acting ability. But the problems with this movie have nothing to do with the leads, or with the sporadic nature of the sexual tension between them. Instead, they're more basic. I would be among the first to argue that, in a romantic comedy, the storyline is not everything. The problem is that, in movies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, it's closer to nothing. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 5 of 10
I am just about ready to write off movies in which people make bets about whether they will, or will not, fall in love. The premise is fundamentally unsound, since it subverts every love scene with a lying subtext. Characters are nice when they want to be mean, or mean when they want to be nice. The easiest thing at the movies is to sympathize with two people who are falling in love. The hardest thing is to sympathize with two people who are denying their feelings, misleading each other, and causing pain to a trusting heart. This is comedy only by dictionary definition. In life, it is unpleasant, and makes the audience sad...Unless, of course, the characters are thoroughgoing rotters in the first place, as in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" (1988), in which Steve Martin and Michael Caine make a $50,000 bet on who will be the first to con the rich American played by Glenne Headley. They deserve their comeuppance, and we enjoy it. "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" is not, alas, pitched at that modest level of sophistication, and provides us with two young people who are like pawns in a sex game for the developmentally shortchanged...He works at an ad agency. She works for a magazine that is Cosmopolitan, spelled a different way. She pitches her editor on an article about how to seduce a guy and then drive him away in 10 days. He pitches his boss on an idea that involves him being able to get a woman to fall in love with him in 10 days...Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson star. I neglected to mention that, maybe because I was trying to place them in this review's version of the Witness Protection Program. If I were taken off the movie beat and assigned to cover the interior design of bowling alleys, I would have some idea of how they must have felt as they made this film. - Roger Ebert
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