Petrie is able to keep everything light and lively, moving briskly from one day to the next so that the audience is never quite given enough time to work out how foolish everything taking place actually is. After all, if one stopped to consider just what Andie and Ben think that they're doing to the other, they would be terribly unlikable characters. Petrie's direction – along with Hudson and McConaughey's solid performances – make sure that the audience is never allowed to stop and think long enough to work it all out.
The new Blu-ray release contains the typical set of bonus features: a director's commentary, a featurette on how the film came to be made which is more on the process of getting to filming than it is on the filming itself, a talk with the writers of the original book (Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long), a music video, and deleted scenes. There is also an odd discussion featurette entitled "Why the Sexes Battle" which attempts to place men and women's roles in a cultural and historical context. While nominally interesting, it is never quite believable.
The technical side of the release is somewhere around the average for a Blu-ray romantic comedy. That is to say, that while the Dolby TrueHD mix is a good one – no one will have to play with the remote constantly adjusting the volume between dialogue and music scenes – and that surrounds do come into play when needed, there simply isn't that much for them to do. McConaughey and Hudson look flawless in the film (Hudson's makeup changing colors once or twice on the same night is due to the makeup people not paying attention, not the post-production folks), and the amount of detail and clarity given to the picture is more than adequate. What is most disturbing about the release is that while every one-sheet and poster for the film feature Hudson in the yellow (perhaps golden) dress she wears to the big party at the end of the film, for some reason the artwork on the Blu-ray cover has changed her yellow dress to silver. It is a moderately inexplicable occurrence and wholly foolish.
There is nothing terribly new or startling about How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, it is a film that seems to know exactly where it stands in the pantheon of filmmaking. It certainly won't change anyone's view of the world or relationships, but it absolutely does provide an evening's worth of entertainment.
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