Monday, July 27, 2009
This Is How We Do It: Katherine Heigl as Abby and Gerard
Butler as Mike in "The Ugly Truth", directed by Robert Luketic. (Photo:
Sayeed Adyani/Sony Pictures)
MOVIE REVIEW
The Ugly Truth
In The Battle of The Sexes, Hating The Player And The Game
By
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Monday, July 27, 2009
Robert Luketic directs "The Ugly Truth", which opened last
Friday across the U.S. and Canada. Originally scheduled for release back
in late April, this Katherine Heigl ("27
Dresses") and Gerard Butler ("300")
comedy emits several riotous moments of laughter, but behind these rare episodes
and the film overall are both a sadness and the feeling that nothing new arises
in this romantic comedy about a high-profile, hard-working morning television
talk show producer in Sacramento, California (Ms. Heigl) and a male-chauvinist
and misogynist personality (Mr. Butler) who is hired from his drab but popular
public access TV show existence on his rule-breaking show The Ugly Truth
(where he opines bitingly about women and men and what both want) to rescue the
flagging ratings of the show Sacramento AM. Predictably the marriage made
in media doesn't go off without a hitch and soon Mr. Butler's character is
forever telling Ms. Heigl's what she has to do to get and keep a man.
With interchangeable parts "The Ugly Truth" is similar to
"He's Just Not That Into You", which was released in early March
(perhaps that explains the "Ugly" release date change, among other reasons),
where the man schools the woman about what men want in relationships only to
find that he himself is both bereft of love and slowly but surely falling into
it himself with his female protégé. There's an assortment of sexual
innuendo and not-so funny jokes here, plus what some (parents or non-parents
alike) may find disturbing: a pre-teen boy messing about with something that
belongs to a woman. The particular sequence in question goes on a little
longer than it has to and becomes an exhausting exercise of humor that has been
oft-repeated since "When Harry Met Sally". (To her credit Ms. Heigl gives
it a go, but some in the audience will be saying either "okay, we get it" or,
"is this the best that this film and its creators can do?")
While Mr. Butler plays Mike, the shameless cad with a heart that yearns for
repair and Ms. Heigl plays Abby, the exacting and impatient producer both
characters (and the film overall) are shallower than a puddle of water in a seat
on a bus. There are funnier roles for actors John Michael Higgins (seen
these days in the U.S. floating less-than-bright ideas in DirecTV commercials)
and Nick Searcy as Sacramento AM's KSXP-TV2 boss. These two are priceless
in smaller moments but the main complaint with "The Ugly Truth" is that all its
gloss and good looks can't camouflage the fact that a woman in Hollywood simply
cannot emerge in a romantic comedy film without having to fall out of trees like
apples or trip on banana peels in order to get the onscreen man of her dreams.
Do women truly behave in this fashion? No, and of course this is "just a
comedy", but in a very real sense "The Ugly Truth" plays like a tragedy of epic
proportions.
Just as sad is that the film is scripted by three women (Karen McCullah Lutz,
Kirsten Smith and Nicole Eastman.) Though Ms. Lutz and Ms. Smith delivered
the goods as scribes for both "Ella Enchanted" and last year's satire "The House
Bunny", both have gone wildly askew here. If this film's screenplay is a
sampling indicative of the best that women who write Hollywood romances can do
then we are in for a long nightmare. Published reports speak of Ms. Heigl
as a feminist who was outspoken about the ramifications of Judd Apatow's film
"Knocked Up" but assuming such reports are accurate, would a feminist not
renounce her role in a film like "The Ugly Truth"? (Try Alana Smithee.)
With Mr. Luketic's film one is continuously reminded that women
remain worse off in Hollywood movies in 2009 than in 1939. And
that's the ugly truth.
One thing that can be done to change this is to make films that have more
intelligence, integrity and substance. And writers who are adept at
executing such. Sidney Lumet's film "Network" via Paddy Chayefsky,
released more than three decades ago showed that comedy, satire and the news
were a powerful and entertaining mix, with smart women and vulnerable men.
"His Girl Friday", from the late-1940s, demonstrated that women stood up for
themselves and could deliver laughs without becoming caricatures and lightning
rods of stupidity and vacuous ambition. The blonde "bimbo" stereotype, as
old as the world's oldest profession, is in full effect here and though Marilyn
Monroe more subtly exhibited her appeal and cashed in on the stereotype, she
showed slyness in Howard Hawks' "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and Billy Wilder's
"The Seven Year Itch" among other films and looked a lot smarter than Ms.
Heigl's cardboard cut-out character does here.
With: Cheryl Hines, Bree Turner, Eric Winter Bonnie Somerville, John Sloman,
Jesse D. Goins and Kevin Connolly.
"The Ugly Truth" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for
sexual content and language. The film's duration is one hour and 36
minutes.
Copyright 2009. The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. All Rights
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