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July 30 - August 5, 2009
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The truth is ugly
by Dave Taylor
Over the hump
by Roger Moore
 The truth is ugly
by Dave Taylor
Here’s a funny setup for a movie: take a beautiful control-freak of a woman and make her producer of a morning show at a small TV station.
Then take a scroungy but devilishly handsome guy and have him be the crude-talking cynical relationship expert who says it like he sees it, good or bad. Now, let’s make this funny by having her produce his show, even as she finds him a boor and hates what he stands for.
Unfortunately, while that describes the basic storyline of Robert Luketic’s The Ugly Truth, it isn’t a wry, sweet romantic comedy at all, but instead an exercise in crude language and relationship shock therapy barely held together by a script with so many logic and continuity gaffes that it makes you wonder if they accidentally used an early draft.
Katherine Heigl plays Abby, the producer of the KSXP 2 Sacramento morning show. She’s not a pleasant person but rather a caricature of a controlling woman, so uptight that when she goes on a blind date, she admits to the guy that her assistant has already run a background check on him and brings “talking points” in case they have nothing to say. The problem is that Heigl is too beautiful to pull this role off. Give it to someone who is attractive, but not gorgeous, and perhaps you can believe that she’s repressed and a control freak.
On the other side of the story, Gerard Butler plays Mike, a crude boor of a guy who, again, is (surprise) hiding some disastrous relationships from his past that have broken his heart and left him a vocal cynic and the voice of The Ugly Truth, the name of his zero-budget TV call-in show in the wasteland of channel 83 public access cable. Tone down his performance, let him have some lines that suggest he’s not an idiot, just a cynic, and I could have enjoyed his role.
There are a lot of cute ideas and enjoyable setups, but few if any of them actually work. Abby has a checklist that helps her determine if the guy she’s dating is the perfect guy or not, but while she talks about hunky neighbor Colin (barely acted by Eric Winter) having “nine of her 10 criteria”, she never actually says what’s on the list. Why? A perfect opportunity for us in the audience to agree/disagree/laugh.
There were other elements that could have been interesting in a smarter script too. For example, Abby had a cat named D’Artagnan, which I found amusing: D’Artagnan is one of the Three Musketeers, so why have a cat with that name unless Abby sees herself as “fighting for innocence and purity”? That wasn’t developed at all.
Another thing that struck me forcibly as the film progressed was just how excruciatingly bad the dialog was. Heigl must have had nightmares trying to memorize these incredibly dry lines that were supposed to make her seem like a brainiac, but it wasn’t done consistently throughout the film, just when she was at the TV studio so it seemed jarring and lame. At other times, the repartee between her and Butler was quite witty and delightful: where was the consistency?
I’m a guy who usually prefers a good action film to a romantic comedy anyway, but when I compare The Ugly Truth with the other romantic comedy being released this weekend, (500) Days of Summer (read my review at DaveOnFilm.com), it’s quite a contrast. (500) Days is warm, sweet and engaging, with quirky but likable characters. Ugly is overrun with caricatures, crude language and inane setups, by contrast, and is a far inferior movie.
There are some interesting observations about male and female perspectives on relationships and what we’re really thinking versus what we say or how we behave, but there are so many films that have addressed this in a wittier, lighter, more amusing fashion that all I can suggest is that you save your money and skip The Ugly Truth.
Dave Taylor has been watching movies for as long as he can remember and sees at least 500 films a year. You can find his longer, more detailed reviews at www.DaveOnFilm.com or follow his movie updates on Twitter as @FilmBuzz.
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 Over the hump
by Roger Moore
Humpday is a chatty indie collision of pop culture trends, the sort of comedy you get when “mumblecore” wrestles with the boundaries of “bromance.” It gives you something to chew on, even if it is more self-aware and less amusing than its “mumbling” antecedents, In Search of a Midnight Kiss and The Puffy Chair.
Lynn Shelton’s film is about two bosom buddies who were hip, open-minded and willing to try anything back in the day. Naturally, they’re from Seattle. Ben (Mark Duplass of The Puffy Chair) has settled down with Anna (Alycia Delmore) and started thinking family.
“We’ve officially removed the goalie,” is how hipster Ben phrases their babymaking.
But when Andrew (Joshua Leonard) shows up in the middle of the night and is plainly still living a free life full of artistic (and sexual) possibilities, Ben questions his own path. He is caught in a tug of war between Andrew the self-absorbed adolescent and his adult life with Anna.
It’s not just that Ben is missing dinner at home. He’s gone off with Andrew to party with a houseful of arty lesbians. On a dare, he has let Andrew talk him into entering an art contest — “Hump Fest.” They’ll make a “What happens when two straight men have sex?” amateur porn video. They’ll shoot it at a hotel that coming Sunday — “Humpday,” as it were.
“I love you, man” was never more fraught with peril. Who will be the first to flinch? How far will Ben go to prove he’s still hip? How far will Andrew go to prove he’s hipper? Is either man secretly hoping that this little dream date works out? And how will Anna take the news?
Shelton’s characters talk themselves into and out of this dare, and despite clever snatches of dialogue, talk this gimmick to death.
Thankfully, much of the talk is glib: “You’re not as Kerouac as you think you are.”
The characters may be slacker clichés, but they’re recognizable. Duplass makes Ben amusingly conflicted, even if we never buy into what he has apparently bought into. What’s intriguing in this setup is what the dare might teach the guys about the nature of sexuality. It’s not a whim, drunken or otherwise.
Even though Humpday has the mumble and flirts with hard-core, there’s a hint of Emperor’s New Clothes about a movie that’s all chatter. It’s not as Kerouac as it thinks it is.
—MCT, Chicago Tribune
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