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Monday 10th August 2009, 05:17
The Ugly Truth review
Jon: First off, I'm a romcom fan. I realise, being a bloke, that makes me a soppy tart, but so be it. Either because of my sympathy for the genre or my general soppy tartiness, I tend to review them much as Roger Ebert did with...The World is Not Enough, I think - namely a checklist of criteria, and see how many boxes they tick. To my mind it's relatively hard to get a romcom badly wrong - The Wedding Planner comes to mind as one of the few examples. It was an insanely boring film - my only memory was one or both of the leads nearly being hit by a dumpster - if it had actually made contact and the credits had rolled, it would have given the audience a bigger laugh than any other bit of the movie and spared us all a lot of bother.
However, they're also very hard to get really right - it's rare to find a romcom that properly balances the rom and the com such that it's funny until the end, but also makes you care enough about the couple involved (and the other characters, too-often overlooked). Four Weddings and a Funeral is probably the best example of that - genuinely funny, genuinely touching, and while you're fairly sure the main couple will end up together (because they pretty much always do - My Best Friend's Wedding being a rare example of a semi-curveball), it throws in the occasional loop.
That inevitability is one of the main problems with the genre, but also the main reason a lot of people (myself included) go and see them - if you're in the mood for a few laughs and to see happy people get together, pretty much any one will do. If, however, you're in a cynical mood, give something like Very Bad Things a try instead. This is turning into a bit of a treatise on romantic comedies, which I don't mean it to be, but this is my first written review since starting to write here, so I figured best get it out now. My point is that for me, a romcom has to work that much harder to drag itself away from the "yeah, it was OK" middle-ground of reviews.
Anyway, The Ugly Truth. Katherine Heigl plays a control-freak TV producer, with Gerard Butler being her man-whore "talent". He starts giving her advice on how to seduce her new neighbour, leading to them of course spending time together, falling for each other, etc. etc. While as setups go it's no worse than many, and the two leads fit their parts....reasonably well, it's all appallingly two-dimensional. Every hint of a deeper plot or better characterisation has been purged, so while there are a few smiles, and a few laughs, you just don't really care.
This is doubly unforgivable given that there's a very good supporting cast on hand, none of whom get any worthwhile material, beyond a couple of good moments between John Michael Higgins and Cheryl Hines as the unhappily married co-hosts, but who are then all but forgotten about as the movie progresses. Likewise Bree Turner as the obligatory best friend/assistant, who bemoans her own love life but is never fleshed out to any degree.
Gerard Butler is built on to some extent as we meet his nephew, and see that how they are together hints at his real feelings underneath his shallow exterior. He also has a believable-ish moment when he explains to Katherine Heigl the run of relationships which led to his attitude towards women.
However, all of this is mostly steamrollered over by the leaps the movie takes over most worthwhile development. Much is made of Heigl's control-freakery, how it deters men, and how she's kept it hidden from her new man at the order of Butler, but we see hardly any of that, so when she finally reveals the truth to him we're more confused than he is. Likewise the growing attraction between the leads - Butler has a few lingering looks behind her back, prompted by...nothing, and Heigl's reciprocation also comes from pretty much nowhere.
The whole thing just feels like a fairly soulless exercise in romcom-making, which of course it is, but the trick is to hide that fact from the audience. Even the vibrating-knickers-incident, highlighted in the trailer, doesn't give much of a laugh beyond, well, watching the trailer. It ticks the basic boxes of relatively likeable leads and one or two jokes, but doesn't make any attempt at being a fully-grown film. It certainly whiles away 90-odd minutes, but with a better script and more time spent on the background characters it could have been worth seeing. As it is, save it for a DVD rental if you're really out of options. Oh, and the final scene just seemed a bit of a weird addition. If you're desperate for a romcom at the cinema, you're currently much better off (well, relatively speaking) with The Proposal, which may still be on - we reviewed it in last week's podcast.
Two final thoughts - this fits into a neglected (but it worked for me) middle ground between a regular quite sanitised romcom, and a more blokey comedy. It's got a surprising amount of swearing in it, but all in context and well-used. To be honest it makes it more believable given the subject matter and people discussing it - keeping it overly clean would have been a bit weird. Having said that I reckon my attitude will be quite unusual - it's more likely to put off an audience expecting something more gentle, while not really being the right sort of movie to attract bawdier types.
The second is that this does borrow lightly from When Harry Met Sally, both in terms of orgasms in public and a couple who have different attitudes to relationships but end up falling for each other (yeah, tenuous but it's where my mind went). Hardly an accusation of plagiarism, more just that it's unfortunate for this movie that it reminded me of a much better one. Meg Ryan's place in cinematic history is well and truly secure for now.
I've also just realised that rather than writing this, I should have been editing the podcast we recorded on Friday. Apologies - busy weekend. Will get it done later today.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus trailer