The Ugly Truth

By Dan Hudak // hudakonhollywood.com

Hudak's Rating: C / not worth the $10.

“The Ugly Truth” is an example of how not to make a romantic comedy. There’s not one line, scene, sequence or circumstance that isn’t straight out of the traditional rom-com playbook, which makes the movie so unoriginal you’ll feel like you’ve seen it hundreds of times before. That’s because you have.

As a general rule, the romantic comedy formula is as follows: Two people meet, hate one another, are forced to spend time together (usually in montage), realize they’re meant to be together, are artificially torn apart, then enjoy a happily-ever-after finale. The problem isn’t that “The Ugly Truth” follows that formula too closely, it’s that the jokes are predictable, the leads lack chemistry and much of the humor feels forced.

Control-freak TV news producer Abby (Katherine Heigl, “Knocked Up”) runs her morning program with precision. Fair enough. But she also approaches her love life the same way, including having a list of 10 “necessary attributes” her male suitors must possess. With TV ratings sagging, Abby clearly needs personal and professional help.

Enter Mike (Gerard Butler, “300”), a chauvinist pig, to do a segment called “The Ugly Truth.” In it Mike discusses all the mistakes women make in relationships, and is brutally honest in doing so. Some of the “truths” are bogus (that men stop evolving at toilet training) while others have validity (that women shouldn’t talk about their problems on a date, because men really don’t care, though they may pretend to if it’ll help get them laid), but all serve the function of allowing Abby to hate Mike.

They must work together, though, and they don’t see eye-to-eye until Mike helps her romance a hottie doctor (Eric Winter) who lives next door. This is where they spend time together, fall in love, etc., all leading to the long-awaited, couldn’t-come-soon-enough, please-dear-lord-let-it-get-here-already finale.

In all fairness, there are a few laughs to be had. Cheryl Hines and John Michael Higgins are fine as the news anchors, and Bree Turner and Nick Searcy do some nice supporting work as Abby’s assistant and the station manager, respectively. But far too often the comedy feels forced and too unrealistic, as it does at the baseball game and the Jell-O wrestling scene. Even the vibrating underwear sequence, which is a blatant rip-off of “When Harry Met Sally,” feels contrived, though Heigl makes it work.

There’s a way to be funny and amusing while telling a predictable story, but that’s not what director Robert Luketic (“Legally Blonde”) has done here. Instead, he’s taken a lame script and infused it with no life or energy. And that’s “The Ugly Truth” about this movie. (I know, lame ending for the review. But appropriate given the quality of the movie, no?)

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