The Ugly Truth (2009)

The Ugly Truth is the most tawdry film of its type (unorthodox makeover to win a boyfriend or girlfriend and get laid) that I have seen -- and that includes Forty-Year-Old Virgin. Katherine Heigl (I'll call her Nutz) is a prissy control freak and TV news producer whose housecat stumbles across a call-in show that makes her spit self-righteous bile at the scruffy Neanderthal-brained Gerard Butler (I'll call him Yutz), who unabashedly promotes "The Ugly Truth," that men are irredeemable pigs and women had best accept and play to the lowest possible denominator, if they want a man. Naturally, the following morning, the gone-to-seed boss of Nutz happens to introduce Yutz as a new guest host who will "mix things up" and bring the station some shock-jock ratings mojo. His offensive swill immediately flows as he starts a live-air confrontation between the husband-and-wife co-anchors about their lack of a sex life. Later, Nutz is in a fine restaurant making a business presentation to network executives who might buy the station when a remote-control vibrator she inexplicably installed before the meeting becomes a highly audible source of distraction from her presentation, esp. after the remote control rolls away into the hands of a child, who plays with it for many minutes while Yutz laughs knowingly. (His sister's son also watches his show, though he tells him not to, and solicits and receives advice about girls.) Think about everything offensive, chauvinistic, and inappropriate that could be said or done and it is almost all there. Only in the second half of the movie do Nutz and Yutz begin to speak like actual adults. In a word, Nutz accepts a challenge from Yutz to try his methods -- falsifying who she is and promoting boobs and butt to attract a man. How things work out does include a life lesson -- it is just too bad that all the wrong methods have to work so well before Nutz can come full circle to reclaim her identity. Despite its loose threads, I would have given this film 3.5 stars save for the tawdry first half, which I give 2.5 stars for an overall rating of 3 stars. (3-21-2011, posted 4-6-2016)