THE UGLY TRUTH (Robert Luketic). 101 minutes. Opens Friday (July 24). For venues, times and trailers, see Movies. Rating: NN
The Ugly Truth is as crude as its lead male character. Played by Gerard Butler, Mike’s the neanderthal local TV commentator on male-?female relationships, vulgar and predictable. Guys, he says, should give up on love and concentrate on lust.
Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy, Knocked Up) plays Abby, his uptight, romantically challenged producer who loathes everything about him. When Mike wagers he can successfully help her bag hot doctor Colin (Eric Winter), she covers the bet.
Why? Given what we know, she would normally tell him to take a hike.
But this is rom-com country, and scriptwriters’ll use any excuse for setting up the sex jokes: Abby wiping off date Colin’s pants while appearing on the Jumbotron to be giving him a blow job, Abby attending a corporate dinner while wearing vibrating underwear that gets triggered by… oh, never mind.
Through all this, Heigl, who looks great, shows comic chops, and Butler does boor very well, but the script, which already strains credulity, collapses entirely in the last 15 minutes during a hot-?air balloon ride that gets broadcast live.
Rental fodder only. [rssbreak]
