Review of The Ugly Truth (2009) by Chads. — 25 Jul 2009

The very second that Abby(Katherine Heigl) instructs Mike(Gerard Butler) to lick jello off a scantily clad woman's face through his earpiece, the producer loses her scruples and does her part in dumbing down the news, an ongoing trend first attested to in James L.

Brooks' "Broadcast News". Likewise, fellow producer Jane Craig(Holly Hunter) loses her professional scruples when she feeds anchor Tom Grunick(William Hurt) the proper questions for a live on-air interview with a NATO representative.

Although Jane tried in vain to plug holes in a hemorrhaging dam that would eventually break(the watershed moment when an entertainment-based tabloid form of journalism drowned the news division), she let the bad guy win, because the bad guy(Tom knew nothing about the Middle East) turned her on.

Seven years later, more or less, after Jane slept with the devil: "Icegate" happened, O.J. happened, and for Abby, the producer of "Sacramento A.M.", who name checks Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu to confirm her own journalistic cred against the post-Cronkite epoch of lowest common denominator reporting, Mike happened.

As soon as the woman-hating host of "The Ugly Truth" joins the show, Abby pulls the neat trick of selling out both feminism and the vocation she professes to uphold. "The Ugly Truth" not so subtly posits the idea that women are undone by their hormonal urges: in other words, their "vertical smile", their "Cleopatra grip"(album titles used by early-nineties dreampop band The Heartthrobs).

When Mike tells Abby, "Thank your p**** for me," the pun is intended. Even Abby's cat abets the deconstruction of the feminine mystique. Mike is supposed to be a one-night stand, not Abby's one true love, but this post-feminist update of Fred Schepisi's "Roxanne" has its own deranged ideas(complete utter debasement works like catnip on this single woman) about successful wooing.

This desperate romantic comedy tries to fool us with a lot of climactic hot air about love, but the ugly truth about Abby is that her love for Mike appears to be purely physical. She loves big "noses" like how a man loves big "brains".

She's too masculine for this feminine genre.