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.