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SYNOPSIS:
Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler star in this wildly funny battle of the sexes. Abby (Heigl), a successful morning show producer, is looking for a lot in a man. Mike (Butler), her obnoxious TV star, knows men only want one thing. Determined to prove that she's not romantically challenged, Abby takes Mike's advice during a promising new romance, but the unexpected results will stun everyone.
MOVIE
REVIEW:
If
you are easily offended by words like 'cock', 'pussy' and
phrase liked 'flick the bean' (watch the movie if you must
know), I guess you are best to avoid this because watching
"The Ugly Truth" is akin to flipping through a copy
of Modern Day Dictionary of Coarse Language if there’s
ever one published.
Rising
TV star Katherine Heigl (from Grey’s Anatomy) pairs
up with Gerald '300' Butler in this Robert Luketic’s
movie about a classy TV producer, Abby Richter (Heigl) who
has to work together with a crass but highly rated public
access TV host, Mike Chadway (Butler) on a show called "The
Ugly Truth" to pull in the network’s flagging ratings.
Abby is the perfect single career woman, ultimate control
freak and will even resort to doing background checks on her
dates while Mike is the new-age love guru who openly dispense
advices on dating and sexual matters in the honest yet crudest
way ever. When Abby meets her dream partner, Colin, an orthopedic
doctor and conveniently her neighbour, Mike offers to help
her 'nab' her man from restyling her hair to her clothings
to her controlling behaviour and what else? You already knew
the ending.
According
to Mike Chadway, the sex-love-guru, men is not interested
in women’s problems, they only pretend to care and listen.
Two, men is only interested in tits and asses. Three, men
likes something to grab on for example longer tresses other
than ass. You learn more about the male species than you will
ever learnt from your mum/BFF in this 96 minutes movie. That
is, if all the above facts are true (I can’t speak on
behalf of all the men in this planet). Written by three ladies
(scriptwriters), "The Ugly Truth" paints a rather
ugly side of men and pathetically tries to squeeze every single
verbal gag out of it and yes there’s Heigl doing an
updated version of Meg Ryan in a crowded restaurant.
Unfortunately
despite the amount of vulgarities, "The Ugly Truth"
offers no huge surprises for a rom-com unless you consider
the R-rated-Apatow’s humour as one. I was hoping the
Colin character will turn out to be gay as he’s far
too perfect for a man (Oh mine, I’m turning into a man
which Mike’s envisioned) but sadly no. I was thinking
that Chadway has a far more interesting backstory to tell
prior to his stint as a raunchy TV host but yet again no.
Thus we are left with Katherine Heigl and Gerald Butler’s
constant grating which I have no qualms about as Butler has
no doubt once again cemented his bad-boy image and Heigl in
my opinion is the newly crowned Queen of chick flicks.
Although
"The Ugly Truth" is not your usual saccharin of
romance comedy, it does has moments of fun between the leads,
bawdy humour to keep the pace going and the potential to stretch
further given the attention-grabbing material but sadly Hollywood
being Hollywood tends to revert to the same old formula. Come
on, what do you expect? It’s The Ugly Truth.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
Select scenes commentary with Director Robert Luketic and
Producer Gary Lucchesi – Instead of a full
commentary track, we have some brief comments from the director
and producer for the pre-selected 10 scenes from the movie.
A good move for the casual viewer I should say.
Deleted
& Extended Scenes – There are altogether
6 deleted and extended scenes which run a total of 16 minutes,
nothing particularly funny except for the extended sequence
which involves Abby’s blind date with the Kevin Connolly
character.
Alternate
Endings – Seem like the filmmakers can’t
decide which ending to go for so they shot 3 in the end thus
you can get to see the other 2 which are not selected for
the final cut here.
Gag
Reel – A not-so-funny 10 minutes gag reel.
The
Truth Is Ugly: Capturing the Male & Female Point of View
– Running a total of 12 minutes, the cast and crew talks
about male and female species and the ugly truth of it. Purely
PR stuff that gets bored after a minute.
The
Art of Laughter: A Making of Hilarious Proportions
– What we have here is 15 minutes of the cast and crew
talking about their characters, how enjoyable it was to come
to set etc. Not to sound mean but isn’t it a bit hypocrite
to talk about 'it’s the best set ever' to be in all
the time. Are you telling us it was not a harmony happy set
in your previous movies?
Trailers
from Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Julie & Julia, Angels &
Demons and Year One round up the disc extras.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
The
visual of the DVD is filled with natural tones, strong colors
and stunning details which fit perfectly for the look of a
rom-com. The audio comes with Dolby Digital 5.1 which never
gets utilized much except for some mundane atmospheric sound
effects during the ball game, in the office environment, dance
hall etc. As for the dialogue sequences, if you must know,
are pitch-perfect.
MOVIE RATING:
 
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Linus Tee
Posted on 4 January 2010
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