The Ugly Truth

nyone who came to the site this week looking to read about (500) Days of Summer is about to be subjected to some disappointing news. I got the date of the screening wrong, and I missed it. So, instead of seeing the Sundance darling, the film that many people are calling one of the year’s best, I got to see what people are calling one of the year’s worst. Lucky me, right?

For people who know and care a great deal about movies, The Ugly Truth is absolute trash and is painful to watch. It really is deserving of all the garbage being heaped upon it because it brings absolutely nothing original or impressive to the table. For general audiences (and I don’t mean this in a condescending way), this will likely be an enjoyable movie going experience. Now, we all know that I’m burdened with a massive knowledge and appreciation of movies, so it’s tough for me to do this, but when I look at this movie through “general” eyes, I can see why people would be entertained. That extremely condescending joke aside, the main reason I say this is based on audience reaction and the opinion of the person I saw this with, who described it as “cute”. The main distinction between people like me and general audiences isn’t a knowledge thing, or an intelligence thing (well, sometimes it is), but rather how we view movies. If you’re one of the people who goes to the movie looking for a fun, relaxing two hours or so where you can turn off your brain, then this is a movie for you. It’s complete superficial fluff. We go to movies to turn our brain on, to think, to watch characters and feel their emotion. I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong way, just giving you my perspective and how it compares to this movie.

TUT is a romantic comedy, cut from the same mold as every Hollywood rom-com of the last ten years, but with an attempt to throw some Apatowian flair on it. Instead of getting a rom-com that feels new and fun, we get something completely generic and unrealistic, and I mean super unrealistic. Unrealistic to the point that it is offensive that the movie expects me to believe something so dumb. I said in my review of The Proposal that it was “one of the most unrealistic representations of human beings I have ever seen”. Good thing I qualified it by saying “one of”, because TUT clearly takes that title, and I do not want to have to apologize to a movie as bad as The Proposal. This is entirely the fault of the director, Robert Luketic. He creates a world with characters so two-dimensional and cartoonish that nothing is able to thrive. I’ve seen more character development in a Sunday morning cartoon strip.

The entire plot is comprised of recycled elements from other rom-coms. As for the crudeness, the movie certainly has that. The difference between a movie like this and an Apatow movie is that the crudeness in those movies feels organic and natural, where here it seems completely forced. Apatow sets out to make a funny movie and the crudeness is just a part of that. TUT is simply crude for the sake of being crude, and despite leading to some humor, it hinders the movie in the long run.

With the leads, the casting director got it half right. Gerard Butler, who has proven his action chops, is the only part of the movie that consistently garnered laughs out of me. He is charismatic and funny, if only he was in a better movie. His worse half, Katherine Heigl, spends the entire movie over acting. It is never a good idea to cast an unlikeable actress to play an unlikeable character when that character is the crux of your story. In a fluff movie like this, you’re supposed to want the two characters to end up together, but with Heigl being so unlikable, you want Butler to end up with someone else. Is anyone else upset by the fact that Heigl bitched about Knocked Up being derogatory towards women (after it made her a star I might add), only to turn around and do a movie that is far more derogatory? Someone should kick her in the face.

I can’t write any more about this movie because I’ve already given it more of my time than it deserves. Long story short, there’s some laughs, some gags, some crudeness, no characters, and Katherine Heigl sucks.