Given that How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days is ostensibly based on a parodic self-help book of the same title (written—and illustrated, in full stick-figure glory—by Michele Alexander and Jeannie Long), you’d expect something a bit irreverent and original. You’d be wrong, of course—the film incarnation of the book is nothing more than a formulaic romantic comedy, and bows just as low before the altar of When Harry Met Sally as every other romantic comedy since 1989. Not to say that it’s a bad film, of course—there are some genuinely funny moments, there’s real chemistry between stars Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, and the supporting cast does incredible work—but its reliance on clichés ultimately makes it hard to watch more than once (unless, of course, you’re a die-hard genre freak, in which case, have at it).

The setup for the film is every bit as complex as its ending is predictable and simplistic: Hudson plays Andie Andersen, a writer working at a women’s magazine called Composure (a title chosen, apparently, because it looks an awful lot like the word Cosmopolitan). She longs to be a serious journalist, but currently, she’s stuck being the magazine’s resident “how-to girl,” telling desperate women how to dress for their body type, how to talk their way out of a traffic ticket, and how to land Mr. Right. Taking inspiration from a friend who is unlucky in love (played by a very funny Kathryn Hahn), Andie decides to write an anti-how-to column, “How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.” Her plan involves actively finding a man, dating him, and figuring out how to best drive him away.

The lucky guy happens to be Benjamin Barry (McConaughey), a young advertising exec who really, really wants to advertise diamonds. His boss insists that he first prove that he can sell to women, and thus a bet is made: if he can make a girl fall desperately in love with him in ten days, he gets the job. If you can’t see where this is going, you’ve obviously never seen a romantic comedy (or a comedy of any sort, for that matter). The two hook up, and both of them spend the next ten days miserable—Andie trying everything she can think of to drive Ben away, and Ben doing everything he can to make Andie stay.

Admittedly, there’s some comedic gold here, and the actors manage to mine a great deal of it. Hudson has an excellent sense of comic timing, and switches back and forth between her two personas (the Serious Journalist and the Crazy Stalker Girlfriend) at breakneck speed (I admit I had trouble keeping up at points). At times she seems just as surprised by the things she’s doing as McConaughey is. Admittedly, McConaughey is given a much less interesting role to play (that of straight man), but he does quite well with it, playing Ben as a cocky ladies’ man that repeatedly gets cut down to size by Andie’s bipolar antics. Adam Goldberg and Thomas Lennon, however, steal the show as Ben’s office friends, who react to everything with a quiet bemusement. Hahn also deserves props for her turn as a fake couples therapist.

Unfortunately, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days is bogged down quite a bit by its standard “three-act” structure. In the first act, Ben and Andie meet and start dating, and in the last act, they do the requisite falling in love thing. This leaves the middle—in which Ben and Andie fight to keep the relationship together and break it up (respectively)—as the only act with anything particularly new to offer. The film is both slow to start up (even if its premise is a bit far-fetched) and slow to wind down (with a denouement that involves both an ear-bleedingly awful rendition of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” and the cliché to end all clichés—a race to the airport). This is unfortunate, since the middle of the picture is so funny and well-acted. Unfortunately, it’s hard to recommend a film simply for its middle—but if you’re looking for a romantic comedy, you could do a lot worse.