In Theaters: The Ugly Truth
While the gays have been twisting and rending the rainbow flag, fretting over whether Brüno is pro- or anti-homo, heterosexuals should be showing similar concern about romantic comedies, which have become their own brand of minstrel shows caricaturizing XX-XY mating rituals and behavior. Breeder ladies and gentlemen, ask yourselves: Is The Ugly Truth good for the straights?
Directed by Robert Luketic, The Ugly Truth shares many of the same odious traits as He's Just Not That Into You: unbridgeable Mars-Venus divides; and a boorish Henry Higgins-type schooling a neurotic woman on the ways to lie and manipulate in order to become more dateable, with the control-freak eventually learning to get her freak on. The Ugly Truth perpetuates one lie after another, particularly concerning female desire: The question remains whether viewers will keep believing them.
You could trace the degradation of women's roles in romcoms within the last two years alone simply by studying the major screen vehicles of Katherine Heigl, who stars in The Ugly Truth opposite Gerard Butler. In 2007's Knocked Up, she plays a smart, attractive on-air reporter, who, though horribly mismatched with a schlub, is sexually confident. In last year's 27 Dresses, Heigl stumbles a notch on the job-status scale, playing an assistant, with wiseacre Judy Greer as her sidekick; though she ends up with a worthier mate, her sexual desire is channeled into matrimonial taffeta. Heigl's Abby in The Ugly Truth is a rough composite of her earlier two roles. She works in television again, this time as a producer for a local Sacramento news show; her assistant, played by Bree Turner, bears a strong resemblance to Greer. But Abby reaches a new nadir in sexless, controlling women -- one who insists that she never masturbates. She'll need a man for that.
Written by Karen McCullah Lutz, Kirsten Smith (the scripters of last summer's whip-smart Anna Faris comedy, The House Bunny), and first-timer Nicole Eastman, The Ugly Truth settles for the broadest of contrivances and the creakiest of jokes and gags within the film's saggy 95 minutes. With the ratings of Sacramento A.M., Abby's TV show, in the toilet, the can-do blonde is given a mandate by her boss to boost the ratings (he has a son in beauty school to support, after all). Abby is assigned all the traits of the uptight single woman: an obsession with checklists of attributes that the ideal mate must have, granny panties, a cat. Salvation for Abby's program arrives in the stubbly form of Mike (Butler), lured away from his public-access show to host a segment that proffers priapic philosophy. Abby and Mike loathe each other, of course, but he offers to teach her the rules of "lust, seduction, and manipulation" so she can woo Colin (Eric Winter), the pretty podiatrist who lives next door. Mike advises Abby on push-up bras and sagely counsels, "When he asks about your problems, it means he wants to stick his dick in your ass." (Remember, gals: To avoid anal rape, just smile and say nothing the next time your fella asks how your day at work was.)
We know what will happen between the piggy Pygmalion and his guileful Galatea. What's unexpected is how abysmally relations between the sexes are portrayed -- even after confessing their love, the film's final scene suggests, Abby and Mike must continue deceiving each other -- and the depths of humiliation actresses are willing to endure onscreen. Heigl, who seems willing the set the bar a little lower for herself with each new film, submits to vibrating undies remote-controlled by a fat kid at a restaurant. Heigl and Butler go through the motions of discovering the thin line between hate and love, looking as though they'd rather be talking to their accountants. In the decades since the Truth went from being Awful to Ugly, recognizable adult heterosexual characters in romantic comedies have nearly vanished, content never to leave their faraway outposts on Venus and Mars.
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Comments
this is why heigl's comments about knocked up really chapped my ass. i would love to see her defend what seems to be yet another stereotypical rom com especially since she is the producer.
it's a pity because with her inherent bitchiness, katie could've ascended above the other Wonderbread blond rom com actresses like kate hudson.
Welcome Melissa, great review. But The House Bunny, whip-smart? It had a funny central character but everything else about it was just the same old thing, wasn't it?
I think I'll stay in and watch The Philadelphia Story instead.
All I want is a rom-com flick,
Free of painful misogynists.
And no sign of cliched shticks,
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?
Roles for woman of substance and smarts,
Scenes that don't make me want to barf.
Good script, good cast, a triumph of the art,
Oh, wouldn't it be loverly?
I'd feel better about your new reviewer if she hadn't used the phrase "whip-smart." The cliche had been buried for years (since people stopped using whips, probably) until resurrected by Liz Phair. Anybody who follows is suspect. "Smart" will suffice.
As for the movie...well, I'm one romantic guy, but Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler? Really?
points for Ms. Anderson's lede, however.
Dear God, this is how you treat the new employees at Movieline?
Is the author of this entry really surprised that Heigl would take a crappy romcom in return for a fat paycheck?
Bravo! Brava!
The presence of lady-writers for this tripe begs the questions: Are they writing scripts like this because they think that's what sells, or do they think this in any way insightful and/or funny?
In keeping with her trend of continually devolving, Heigl is already on board to star in next year's sure-fire romcom blockbuster. Entitled She's So Potty!, Heigl will be playing the role of lowly high school janitor. Downtrodden, hackneyed, but never losing faith in love..or herself.
And then magic. She soon falls head over heels for John - a urinal in the boy's locker room (which she lovingly cleans after-hours). At first her girlfriends give her flack about her new beau, but ridicule soon turns to thinly-veiled envy as John turns out to be a flush above any other man they've ever known. He's convenient, sturdy, and always has a fresh deodorizer block in his basin.
Heigl almost throws it all away though, when she is caught at a local Elephant Bar with Shimpei, an exotic bidet from Japan she used to chat with online years ago that has recently moved to her neighborhood. Through tears, montages, & more than a few Brillo pads - she realizes true love.
But will John still give a crap?
Great review; sad but true, there are some higher ups who ought to rue the day they green-lighted most of what's happening in marketing and movies (same thing, all brainwashing) these days.
Tonight, shopping for sundries in a store where countless little girls walk the aisles with their parents, in plain view as a huge display on one aisle's end was a Maybelline mascara installation paired with black, S&M-style leg-long shiny stilettos --- some kind of package opportunity. These used to be considered bend-over and "f#$* me" shoes, not displayed for children to see and not normalized as if anything but very kinky. Is getting your freak on now a requirement of womanhood as defined by men? It's just wrong for girls to be media-made into people who are at the butt end of, as the male character of this reviewed movie said, any man who "wants to stick his dick in your ass.”
How can women not be outraged? After the addictive buzz of thrilling "kink" has passed, most women I've known to talk about it feel that they've been traumatized by it, and need a lot of time to come back alive, recover from the numbing out. Please keep writing reviews like this one to tell the truth about the normalization of misogyny --- it needs to stop and women ought to wake up to what's happening for themselves and their daughters (or friends if they're not moms), which may be difficult because media is a powerful brainwashing tool ... and the sick, slick woman-hating masquerading as being hot on men's terms is everywhere.
You lost me at 'whip smart movie HOUSE BUNNY'. I just endured that piece of tripe and the last thing I'd call it is smart. If that's your bar for good women's films, you've set it as low as Katherine Heigl's career choices. The only difference between the two films it seems is that instead of a Playboy bunny teaching the women to exploit themselves, it's an obnoxious man. This movie sounds like it'll be the #1 film this weekend and Heigl's reign can continue. Yuck.
Perhaps the whole thing is a satire of those hoary heterosexuals and their cliched rituals, produced by the vengeful f*g-hag Heigl and co-starring the seemingly extremely hetero-flexible Butler?
Thanks for writing, Morgo. Yes, a lot of the The House Bunny's appeal is rooted in Anna Faris's performance; she, like Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Holliday before her, excels at playing the smart dumb blonde. But we have Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith to thank for the funniest line in movies last year, which Faris's character delivers to her new charges: "Remember, ladies—the eyes are the nipples of the face."
Excuse me, but what exactly is "hetero-flexible"??
What's up friends, its impressive paragraph on the topic of cultureand entirely explained, keep it up all the time.