Sex, lies and condescension

The Ugly Truth is the worst sort of romantic comedy. It presents a stereotype that holds all the entertainment value of nails on a chalkboard: A beautiful, successful, independent woman harbors a secret - she's really a ditzy bimbo on the inside. Her pretensions of power and assertiveness are defensive overcompensations for the weakness that afflicts all members of her sex, or at least the pretty ones.

In this case, the bimbo is TV producer Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl), a classically attractive and yet improbably socially inept executive type with seemingly little influence on either her bosses or underlings. And, despite her best efforts, she just can't seem to find a man.

Enter rakish male and talk show host Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), possessed of an excess of machismo and therefore irresistible charm, who breaks said bimbo down and melts her frigid little heart. And they both live happily ever after.

As a formula, it's not even laughable; it's beneath contempt. And yet, it seems to hold endless appeal for many moviegoers of both genders. Why is a mystery. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men [and women]?" asked The Shadow in the 1930s American radio dramas. Well, the reader may know what drives such drivel, but this reviewer hasn't a clue.

Butler's Chadway is the most unappealing male lead in a romantic comedy this year. He's boastful, offensive and utterly inane. That some of the persona is an act - he has a softer side in private - is of little comfort. The idea that fictive females or fawning fans would go limp for a guy like this is disturbing.

It calls to mind Tom Cruise's brilliant turn as a propagandist of extreme misogyny in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), in which Cruise preens before a live audience belting the mantra, "Worship the cock!" The difference being that Anderson was satirizing madness, while director Robert Luketic's picture is a note of endorsement for the idea that we big strong men should take charge of all the naive, so-called professional women out there in the world. They may seem like competent, ambitious up-and-comers, but, rest assured, they're really emotionally retarded, sentimental fools.

When Richter begins to concede Chadway's charm with the ladies and solicits his assistance in landing a man, he robs her of her last shreds of dignity and sets out to teach her the art of seduction. Like some sexist Yoda, he tarts her up, tells her to keep her opinions to herself and laugh at every joke she's offered. This most unsentimental education has the effect of rendering Chadway smitten - she learns to fake "dumb blonde" so well that he falls for her. But his wonders have worked their magic, and Richter at last finds a handsome, successful man. The obstacles to a happy ending now predictably in place, the pair begin a tentative dance toward an unlikely love affair.

The modern-day movie shrew is bitchy and shrill, to be sure, but audiences have come to expect that she be at least moderately attractive as well. Heigl's Richter is a pallid, second-rate version of the type, more bore than bombshell.

Like Uma Thurman earlier this year in The Accidental Husband, Richter isn't sexy at all; she's just stupid and kind of sad. Whereas Sandra Bullock managed to achieve genuine charisma and a certain amount of sex appeal in The Proposal (another recent comedy with an equally wretched script), Heigl's alternating attempts at indignation and coquettishness are uniformly irritating. Her post-coital riposte, "Giving myself to you was like giving myself to a chain saw," will resonate with many audience members in unintended ways.

By the close of the film, one wants Chadway to brain the blighted Richter with his figurative club and drag her back to his cave already; anything to make the tedium cease.

Luketic's most successful film to date was 2001's Legally Blonde, so it's unlikely The Ugly Truth will be his last contribution to the genre. Either way, others just like him will doubtless continue to recycle the formula over and over again well into the future.

Who's to blame? Methinks the fault, as the Bard put it, "is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com