Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
7/31/09
It is one of the fundamental
questions of the human experience: is love real? I'm not talking
about infatuation, we all know that's real. I'm talking about storybook,
happily-ever-after LOVE. Our society is built around the assumption
that it is, but the divorce rate strongly suggests otherwise. If
there is no such thing as true, lasting love, Hollywood's played a big
role in persuading us otherwise. But it's been troubling over the
last few years to watch the romantic comedy genre kinda throw in the towel
on love, and I don't know that I've ever seen a more intentionally cynical
romcom than The Ugly Truth. Crass and unfunny, it gets by
on two appealing leads giving their characters more effort and dimension
than they deserve. That, and a fascinating dark subtext too ugly
for the filmmakers to truly face.
TV news producer Abby (Katherine
Heigl) isn't so much unlucky at love as unfamiliar with the concept.
We meet her on a date, presenting her would-be significant other with a
list of talking points and informing him that he satisfies 9 of the 10
items on her checklist. After the inevitable disaster, she slumps
home and ends up stumbling upon The Ugly Truth, a public access show hosted
by Mike (Gerard Butler), who angrily rails against love and women in general.
Abby debates him on his call-in line and is routed, only increasing her
anger when her boss (Nick Searcy) brings Mike in as a commentator, hoping
to boost the broadcast's rock-bottom ratings. The new segment is
a hit, but Abby is nothing but an obstruction until he throws down the
gauntlet: he'll show her how to woo Doctor of her Dreams Colin (Eric
Winter) in exchange for her becoming a team player, or he'll quit if she
fails. Mike shows her how to dress, how to flirt, how to never criticize
and sexualize everything. Colin predictably falls for this new Slut
Barbie version of Abby, but Mike starts falling for the real thing.
Can he and Abby face The Ugly Truth that they just might be made for each
other?
I know I couldn't, because
The
Ugly Truth makes such a good case against love that it would take far,
far more than a couple of flirty glances from two attractive stars to swing
the pendulum back the other way. Ironically, that's really what it
does well: showing Abby and Mike as wounded individuals blaming the
opposite gender for everything that's wrong with themselves. It doesn't
help that the anti-Pygmalion storyline makes such good points... how many
relationships involve nothing more than crafting a version of yourself
someone else will buy into and then selling it for all you're worth until
it's too late for them to back out? Abby turns herself into a product
for Colin's consumption, but he's really nothing but the same for her:
a handsome doctor who hits all 10 of those items on her list (and how lazy
must the movie be that we never learn more than 3 or 4 of those list items...).
So when she and Mike end up together in an elevator, sure they're drawn
to each other: they're Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler! But
the movie can't do a thing to convince me it's anything but lust (check
out that last scene: it doesn't even pretend the games have stopped),
and barely even tries. Poor Heigl is forced to do the “now I see
him entirely differently” romcom look as a response to Mike ordering tap
water instead of bottled at a restaurant... and that's the best shot the
movie takes at a real connection between them. Seriously.
Not that either of these
characters emerges as much of a catch: the actors do a pretty good
job bringing them to life, but they're the types of an indie tragedy, not
a romantic comedy. Butler is actually quite good as Mike: sure,
he lashes out at womankind for the things that have happened to him, but
he still tries to provide good romantic advice to his young nephew (Noah
Matthews). On the other end, Heigl's massive starpower can only do
so much to hide the fact that Abby's a needy psycho. Late in the
game, she rattles off some of her many flaws (not even the worst ones,
truth be told) and asks “Who would love someone like that?” It's
a heartbreaking, wonderfully acted moment, but the truth is that the answer
is “Nobody.” She's really good at selling the fact that Abby wants,
even desperately needs, to be loved, but this is a woman who needs a lot
of work before she can be part of a relationship with anyone looking to
make even a single choice the rest of their life.
All this wouldn't be such
an issue if The Ugly Truth were funny, but it's really not.
I chuckled a few times (Abby's “happy dance” is cute), but there's not
one true belly laugh. What we have here is an odd animal, a script
with a retro, sitcomish feel (the supporting players are so one-dimensional
they disappear every time they turn sideways) peppered relentlessly with
four-letter words and crass asides, as though the studio insisted that
all the popular comedies are rated R now, but nobody realized that it's
R-rated JOKES that cause that. There's really only one attempt at
the kind of naughty watercooler spectacle one would expect, an extended
sequence where Abby attends a business meeting in vibrating panties that
run amok. But the joke is so on-the-nose there's just no comic give
to what happens: you'd have to be brain-dead not to realize what
has her whipped into a frenzy, and it's not ad time during the news.
The Ugly Truth gets
maximum schizophrenia out of its' three credited screenwriters, alternately
cynical and sunny, black-hearted and conventional. But it doesn't
add up to much of anything, and if not for a well-matched pair of stars,
the movie would be even less watchable than it is. While trying to
match a fashionable lack of faith in true love with a familiar formula
structure, all it really did was make me wonder how long it would take
Mike to be back on the air railing against his failed relationship with
Abby. And that, my friends, is the ugly truth. |
