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A romantically challenged morning show producer is reluctantly embroiled in a series of outrageous tests by her chauvinistic correspondent to prove his theories on relationships and help her find love. His clever ploys, however, lead to an unexpected result.
Katherine Heigl: Abby
A few days ago I saw the new romantic comedy The Ugly Truth starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, directed by Robert Luketic with three screen writers, two of whom worked with the director of a previous chick flick, Legally Blonde.
This film has been taking a mass of flak, mostly directed at Miss Heigl, a beautiful and competent actress who has, it seemed, been called upon to carry a script which is mostly distinguished by the fact that her character, as written, is composed of a number of seemingly perfectionist characteristics, none of which are ever sorted out; and which seems to attempt to move between standard screwball, standard romantic comedy, with occasional Farrelly-Brothers-style freak-out jokes tossed in, with no order, rhyme nor reason.
The whole thing ends in such a predictable manner in a sky filled with balloons that the film might have been written by simply taking discarded parts of other scripts and mixing them in a great big cooking pot.
Mike: [From red band clip] You're all about comfort and efficiency!
Abby Richter: What's wrong with comfort and efficiency?
Mike: Well nothing, except no one wants to fuck it.
In short, while Miss Heigl does not distinguish herself in this indistinguishable mess, laying the blame at her feet strikes me as cruel and foolish. While she is given an 'executive producer' credit, there are a total of eleven producers on this film, which is up near the John Woo level. Miss Heigl carries out her acting assignment competently, and she has good chemistry with Butler. While she has appeared in other rom-coms to better effect,I did enjoy 27 Dresses, surely her job as an actor is not to rewrite the script, nor to insist on a character that makes sense, but to perform the role in a manner as plausible as possible, to milk the funny lines for what they are worth and to be generally of interest when she is on screen. She accomplishes the last, but surely the fact that her character makes no sense and that the gags are thrown in at random cannot be laid at her feet.
Butler is given a much more interesting role, that of a chauvinist pig whose TV producer Miss Heigl is forced to become. However, the audience is swiftly assured that this is simply a pose and Miss Heigl comes to recognize this gradually -- and telling the audience quickly and Miss Heigl slowly is another problem with the script.
There is also the third wheel, played by Eric Winter, who plays an unattached doctor with a body that looks like he spends three or four hours a day working on his abs. Although my early assumption that he would turn out to be gay were not borne out, he serves no real competition to Mr. Butler's and Miss Heigl's inevitable romance.
Abby Richter: My cat stepped on the remote.
Mike: Well, be sure to thank your pussy for me.
The result is that this is a predictable but fitfully watchable romantic comedy with a twist, similar to The Proposal, distinguished mostly by Mr. Butler's macho cloning on What Men Really Want.
Although this harmless fluff carries a higher rating, The Ugly Truth is at times clever, frivolous, borderline crude but lacks nudity and a constant plot. Sure, some of the subject matter and the language might prove offensive, but this guy-wants-gal, guy-loses-gal, and guy-gets-gal back is infectiously entertaining stuff without a mean-spirit to be found anywhere in its trim 96-minutes. If The Hangover was the perfect way to get 2009 cranked up with a comedy, then The Ugly Truth is a smaller taste of the former.
''You will never know...''
7/10
