The Ugly Truth

The Ugly Truth is a movie about boy meets girl, they fall in love, boy loses girl, they make up. Ho-hum.

The movie is directed quite nicely, which is great to see after watching some confusing duds with no transitions between scenes. And there are two scenes that really stand out for comedy, maybe even more.

Abby is a producer at a Sacramento TV station, but it's slowly losing ratings because people don't want to watch the run-of-the-mill, man-on-the-street stuff. In walks Mike, who's been hired as a guy who will shake things up, calling his show The Ugly Truth, a one-man tome on the doomed relationships of men and women. He's crude, he's witty, he's gorgeous-sexy. Abby, who is so much a control-freak that she grades men on their looks and behaviors, doesn't know what to do with him and his new show.

So, of course, they fall in love.

There are a lot of things that don't ring true. Oh, not the falling in love bit, because we all know opposites attract, especially when the opposites are gorgeous. Katherine Heigl is a fine comedian, and although Gerard Butler seems out of sorts in this kind of medium, he makes his point. Still, it seemed kind of stupid to sell Butler's Mike to us as an American, a graduate of San Jose State, of all things. If he went to San Jose State with that accent, I graduated from Oxford.

There are some funny moments, even some witty ones, but as a whole there is nothing new or surprising about this comedy.

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