Film review: Ugly Truth

Published on Thursday 6 August 2009 18:58

UGLY TRUTH (15) * DIRECTED BY ROBERT LUKETIC STARRING: KATHERINE HEIGL, GERARD BUTLER, CHERYL HINES, ERIC WINTER

JUST when it looked like the romantic comedy couldn't get any worse, along comes The Ugly Truth to inflict yet more damage on it. Starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, it's another inch-deep, joke-free, opposites-attract travesty made worse by being dressed up with lots of try-hard raunchiness neither the cast nor the director (Legally Blonde's Robert Luketic) know how to pull off. The result is utterly charmless and thoroughly unappealing, with Heigl squandering the last of her Knocked Up credibility by playing the kind of box-ticking neurotic clich her breakthrough role subtly worked against, and Butler lazily assuming that his rugged good looks and easygoing personality negate the need to develop an actual character.

Not that the script supplies either of them with much to work with in the first place. Heigl is Abby, an uptight TV producer unhappily single and unable to find a guy thanks to the ludicrous checklist of superficial attributes to which she has decided her perfect man must adhere. Butler is Mike, a boorish TV shock jock who uses his late night cable show, The Ugly Truth, to dole out straight-talking advice about what men really want from a relationship. Sort of like a feeble version of Tom Cruise's magnificently repugnant misogynist from Magnolia, Mike's seduce-and-destroy techniques basically boil down to is that what men – all men – want is lingerie-enhanced sex with women who know what an exercise machine is and are willing to suppress their personality to secure the man of their dreams.

Naturally Abby hates Mike and everything he stands for, so when her boss decides to hire him to give her flagging Richard & Judy-style morning show a ratings boost, she's aghast … until he offers to quit if his own advice doesn't help her win over the blandly hunky doctor who has just moved in next door. Unable to resist this offer to get him out of her life, that's the film's cue to riff on Cyrano de Bergerac as Mike covertly instructs the clueless Abby in the art of becoming a total doormat – until, that is, each realises that they're really in love with each other.

Though the film pays lip service to overturning its surface misogyny, it doesn't back this up with any meaningful gestures. That's possibly because no one involved has realised that the Cyrano de Bergerac routine doesn't scan when everyone involved has been blessed with movie star looks, or that crude set-pieces involving vibrating underwear and playground-level banter about women's breasts being more inviting in push-up bras, are no substitute for the poetry of love and the art of seduction. Displaying a tin ear for the way men and women relate to each other about sex, this has none of the easy-going naturalism found in Judd Apatow's films, nor does it have the kind of great gags that make guy-centric comedies such as The Hangover such a blast to watch. Indeed, the ugly truth about The Ugly Truth is that it exposes the absolute contempt the genre once again displays for its women characters.

Letting Mike off the hook way too early by showing him telling his teenage nephew to ignore his show and treat women with respect, the film makes Abby the butt of every joke, saddling her with intensely irritating and contrived character quirks that ensure she's just the latest in a long line of shrill, career-driven, one-dimensional rom-com protagonists whose lives are only validated when they find a suitable hunk to settle down with.