Year Released: 2009
Directed by: Robert Luketic
Starring: Gerard Butler, Katherine Heigl, Cheryl Hines, other people who are usually comedy fodder.
Production Company: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Release Date: July 24, 2009
For a romantic comedy, The Ugly Truth is more comedy, than romance and squanders itself on focusing on a non-existent chemistry between the two main characters. Gerard Butler is a man’s man, so what’s this guy doing screwing around in another ROMCOM? Seriously? I thought he was just testing the waters with “P.S. I Love You”, but he just keeps getting sucked into this genre. At least he’s still doing some testosterone heavy movies like Gamer, even the mediocre reviewed Law Abiding Citizen doesn’t manage to emasculate him. The only person that’s fallen head first into the chick flick fodder cannon without a hope is Matthew McConaughey: and he’s so past the point of return that his balls are small enough to fit into a tic-tac container. Hey, you star with Kate Hudson in enough drippy girly flicks, you lose credibility, just face it.
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| Man, wasn’t 300 awesome? |
Katherine Heigl is uptight, control freak Abby Richter. Abby can’t find a suitable date in L.A mainly because she’s the uptight, control freak type. Abby is the producer of a dying television talk show sorely in need of new blood, which comes in the form of a dirty minded, foul mouthed, yet truthful local cable personality, Mike Chadaway. Gerard Butler is Mike Chadaway, the anti control freak, the woman reader, the guy that knows what makes the sexes tick and uses them for his sexual ends (so we’re to assume). As you’d expect, sparks fly and the two are at ends with each other’s differing personalities. Abby as you know is the control freak, who just wants a man to love for who she is. Mike, knowing that men work by the tips of their southern heads, convinces Abby that he can help her bag the man of her dreams if she listens to his advice. If the deal doesn’t land Abby a man, he’ll resign from her show. This plot introduces us to Mike as more than a one dimensional character, his motivation being his nephew without a father-figure, and bombards us with more Katherine Heigl screen time.
As you would expect, Abby manages to get the man she’s always dreamed of, some comedic situations are thrown her way, and as Mike is giving directions he somehow falls in love with Abby. It’s predictable comedy fodder that we’ll forget in a few months time. That’s a good thing, because I felt like wincing through most of the film. The last 20 minutes for example takes the bickering couple up a romantic balloon ride while still broadcasting live, they pronounce their love for each other and the all’s well that ends well. This thing was written with more concentration on the material and getting girls to go gooey over Gerard Butler than actually focusing on the main relationship at hand.
The love/hate relationship between Mike and Abby was more convincing than the love/love relationship for one main reason: It was believable. I had more fun when they were at each other’s throats, rather than seeing Mike awkwardly gazing at Abby’s direction while she fawns over her new boyfriend on the phone.
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| I should have listened to my agent and stayed on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. |
I’m not sure what the draw is behind Heigl, is she the cute girl-next-door-type, or the stable-funny-type that gets audiences to pay up? What demographic does she play to? As far as I can tell, it’s the hopeless romantics in the world, or those guys who get roped into seeing another one of her movies. I don’t see it, I’m missing the point entirely about what draws people to her, and this is the second Heigl movie I’ve reviewed that I really didn’t like. She’s apparently quit her full time gig on Gray’s Anatomy to do more movies. Can the world really take more of this girl, who has Moxie, or whatever you want to call it filling up more screen time?
Just my two cents.
2.0 out of 10
