The Ugly Truth Post

I wasn’t expecting The Ugly Truth to be as raunchy or aggressively vulgar as it was. The advertisements for the film had painted to look like a classic chick-flick, when in reality the end result is closer to There’s Something About Mary than Bridgett Jones or a Meg Ryan vehicle. Honestly it’s a breath of fresh air to see a romantic comedy that fits guys into the equation. What’s the point in having a romantic date-movie if the girls can’t drag their guys along to see it? The Ugly Truth adds just enough inappropriate hilarity to keep guys strung along while women get the cliché love arch that has sold so many memberships to the Mr. Darcy fan club.

That being said there is a lot wrong with movie as you might imagine. Catherine Heigl continues to be borderline unwatchable in everything she does, and is a very unrealtable main character. Her ‘too busy for her own good’ character who works as a producer at a failing TV news program is too far away from the every-woman who will ultimately want to go see the movie. If I had to do a chick-flick reference I’d say she was a cheap caricature of Cameron Diaz from 2006’s The Holiday. Gerard Butler is pretty much on point as Heigl’s counterpart and plays a role that every guy would like, short of his King Leonidus in 300 (2006 also). The only problem I have with Butler in this movie is his atrocious American accent. We are so used to hear forced British accent attempts, especially in romantic comedies, but this is beyond the opposite. His rootn’ toon’ attempt at sounding like a good-ol-boy is almost as laughable as the awkward scenes he puts Catherine Heigl through. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it-- keep him sounding like the gruff Scot that he is.

Besides those issues the movie is honestly a lot of fun. I was laughing out loud along with the sold-out theater of couples who looked like they where genuinely enjoying themselves. There are some scenes that will offer laughs for everyone while sticking to a love story that meets all the requirements for the chick-flick genre.

It is a perfect date movie that will keep guys happy and girls appeased. Get in your boyfriend points while this one is still in the theaters, before something sappy comes out. (Or you might end up sitting through 130 minutes of Meryl Streep)

Characteristically though, if you strip it of all the hilariously inappropriate comments from Butler and awkwardly amusing scenarios Heigl gets into, it is a tad formulaic. Honestly the film feels like director Robert Luketic went to the movies one lonely Saturday night back in 2006 to watch Butler’s 300, then snuck into a late showing of the Holiday and decided to go home and write a combo-script. Then when he found that it wasn’t that good he decided to take out Leonidus’s weapons and replace them with vulgarity. Three years later someone gave him the money to make film and this survivable little movie pops out. “And that my friends is The Ugly Truth”.