The Ugly Truth

Here’s a litmus test for young lovers. If you believe that men are more interested in sports than fine dining (particularly if it’s mud wrestling)… that they’re more likely to be interested in you if you’re not interested in them… and that a short relationship is the only honest relationship, then you’re already on the same wavelength as Mike (Gerard Butler), the straight-talking cable TV sex therapist who passes for the hero in this mediocre romantic comedy.

Cary Grant he ain’t.

Butler looks paunchy and bleary-eyed – he hasn’t even bothered to shave.

So what’s an intelligent woman to do with a guy like Mike? If you’re Abby (Katherine Heigl) – the neurotic and controlling producer who is ordered to put this guy on the air, you wind up hanging on his every word. See, she hasn’t got a clue how to hang on to a guy (her number one goal in life, natch), and when a dreamy doctor moves in next door (Eric Winter), it’s Mike who shows her how to dress for success, keep her mouth shut, and when to put out.

Katherine Hepburn she ain’t.

Heigl, you may recall, famously broke showbiz protocol to suggest that her hit movie Knocked Up was a teeny bit sexist: the boys were fun while the women were shrews.

You may or may not agree with that assessment, but The Ugly Truth seems like a punishment. Heigl’s character is humiliated at every turn. Even before Mike turns up with a job at her station, she’s pilloried on his show for describing a romantic ideal of a man who’s sensitive and caring, cultured and (admittedly) imaginary.

In other scenes she is caught hanging upside down from a tree in her nightgown; hiding in her office closet; and furiously rubbing a stain out of the doctor’s crotch – in front of a stadium of baying ball fans.

Then there’s the piece de resistance, a scene shamelessly cribbed from Meg Ryan’s finest moment in When Harry Met Sally: for reasons too contrived to explain, Abby is wearing vibrating panties to a business dinner when the remote control falls into the innocently curious hands of a small boy at a nearby table, who proceeds to send her into multiple orgasms while she attempts to hold up her end of the conversation.

It’s a ridiculous scene on every level (she wouldn’t make her excuses and head for the ladies’ room?) and quite creepy in the way it turns female sexuality into a toy for boys.

In real life, Mike wouldn’t last a day in a professional TV station, he’d be hauled up for sex discrimination the minute he cracks that he “likes a woman on top”. Here, he gets the ratings and soon enough a potential network promotion. He even gets the moral high ground, proving his essential worthiness by offering sensible advice to his young nephew. Like: don’t watch my show.

In that same spirit, I would caution anyone of a sensitive disposition to give a wide berth to this sorry effort from the director of Monster-in-Law, Robert Luketic. Not just because the sexual politics are dishonest and trite, but – maybe more importantly – because it ain’t funny. (I snickered once, and immediately felt ashamed of myself.)

Bewilderingly, the script is credited to three women: writing partners Kristen Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz have previously put a light feminist gloss on unpromising material like Legally Blonde and The House Bunny, but this time Nicole Eastman’s scenario proves beyond redemption. Sorry stuff.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com