The Ugly Truth

When I think of Gerard Butler I think of 300 and I think of the awesome scream of 'This is SPARTA!!!!' After watching this film, all I can think is 'This is AWFUL!!!!'

I wasn't sure about this film when I first heard about it. It seemed like an awful chick flick where a rude, obnoxious guy discovers he has a heart of gold. Surprise, Surprise! That's all this film is. Abby (Katherine Heigl) is a TV producer who has to work with Mike (Butler) to get ratings. Mike's segment 'The Ugly Truth' is basically just telling everyone what men really want and think. It's essentially everything the feminist movement fought against and the blueprint to every movie Judd Apatow has been involved in. Being single Mike intrudes on Abby's love life and tries to be her Cyrano de Bergerac at least for a little section of the film giving her tips on what men want. During this of course Abby gets the girl and then they both realise that they are attracted to each other which means of course that Abby needs to choose: The man she has changed her entire life to impress or the guy who has changed her. I mean it is romantic comedy 101.

This film is just fluff. It doesn't outstay its welcome at just over ninety minutes, but still you wonder what exactly the writers were trying to achieve. They start by showing that a woman can get a guy by basically being slutty and then try and attach an emotional bond to it. It just doesn't work. The scenes in the TV studio a slightly amusing if it wasn't for the fact that John Michael Higgin's performance as Larry is just a sub-par Ron Burgundy impression and not nearly as funny as the film likes to think he is.

I always say the worst thing about a great film with no extras is a terrible film with too much. This film just piles on with alternate endings, a gag reel which really should just be called 'alternate takes', some deleted scenes, a commentary and two featurettes. None of this I would recommend watching. The deleted scenes it seems were deleted simply because they were awful, the documentaries seem to just go on and on about how much fun it was to make the film and the gag reel seems to have forgotten the bloopers. I mean how can you screw up a gag reel?

The Ugly Truth is that someone greenlit this film, attached two bankable stars and thought they could cash on the success of 300 and Knocked Up. Sadly the ugly truth is: They failed.