This weekend, raunchy romcom “The Ugly Truth” and Disney’s “G-Force” were the two most talked-about movies hitting theaters. While you would think that almost anything could beat a movie about guinea pig spies at the box office, “The Ugly Truth” failed to do so. When guinea pigs are the better alternative, you know things are bad.
In “The Ugly Truth,” Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) is the producer of a morning show that’s going down the tubes. She needs to find a way to boost ratings, fast. Much to Richter’s dismay, however, her ratings boost comes from the addition of a two-minute daily segment from Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), the male chauvinist host of a local public access show where he gives his advice about relationships — “Get a Stairmaster! Get on it! Get skinny!” The buttoned-up professional and the laid-back womanizer butt heads until they come up with a deal: He will coach her through the process of finding a boyfriend, and in return, she will stop insulting him and allow him to work on her show. According to Chadway, if Richter follows his rules, which basically involve becoming passive and skanky, then she’ll be able to snag and keep a boyfriend who fits all the criteria on her checklist.
It’s hard to miss the misogynistic underlying messages in this story: that the perfect man will never like a woman for who she really is, so women must constantly work to be something different. That in mind, the “romantic” part of romantic comedy is lost in “The Ugly Truth.”
Heigl’s performance also leaves something to be desired. After three films in which she has played essentially the same character, viewers should begin to wonder: Is she capable of doing something different? She always plays an uptight workaholic who needs to loosen up and find an easy-going man to complement her neurotic tendencies. Her character in “The Ugly Truth” is no exception. Abby Richter is desperate, na?ve and neurotic to the point of frightening. She launches into a heated diatribe about tap water within seconds of sitting down for a first date and hides in a closet at work when things don’t go her way. Butler as Mike Chadway is charming, but for the most part, the rest of the characters are self-obsessed and one-dimensional.
Most of the film’s attempts at humor are unoriginal and contrived comedic situations. You’ve seen these scenes before, and they weren’t that funny the first time around. There is nothing fresh or different about “The Ugly Truth,” aside from the characters’ willingness to discuss their body parts and make crude gestures in public.
“The Ugly Truth” is rated R, an unusual designation for a chick flick. Surprisingly, however, the film’s vulgar, raunchy humor and overtly sexual jokes are what occasionally save it. A particularly memorable scene involving a vibrator is probably the film’s only truly funny and original moment. But even though aggressive sexual references might make audiences squirm and shriek, it takes more than a few jokes about masturbation to make a film funny.
Separately, Heigl and Butler have turned out some pretty decent romantic comedies, so their partnership in “The Ugly Truth” should have been a success. But the truth about this movie is ugly–it’s boring, predictable, and unamusing.
1 star out of 5.
