Like most women in movies right now, Katherine Heigl was born in the wrong decade. She has the misfortune to work in a time when her business values women either as something else for the camera to do (apparently Megan Fox is all the transformer certain men need) or as a device to confuse gaydars. Sixty years ago, she might have been a biggish deal in minor comedies, the way she is now. But she might also have had taller, more charismatic men to star with and better things to be and represent than she does at the start of the 21st century, where she’s stuck playing professionally capable, socially retarded women.
The Ugly Truth
‘Ugly Truth’ traps Heigl in another predictable chick flick
Heigl plies her trade in so-called chick flicks, the Lean Cuisine of romantic comedy, and her latest contribution, “The Ugly Truth’’ - or, as I fondly came to think of it, the Baja-style chicken quesadilla (only five Weight Watchers points!) - casts her as an undersexed television news producer named Abby Richter. This is a promotion from being an aspiring TV personality (“Knocked Up’’) and a smitten eco-magazine drone (“27 Dresses’’).
Why is Abby undersexed? Not simply because she’s overworked (she loves her job), but because she’s so good at what she does that she does it during dates. For one rendezvous with Kevin Connolly, of “Entourage,’’ she arrives armed with a background check, talking points, and a checklist of desired personality traits: likes red wine and classical music, has a symmetrical face, never gets up first on a Sunday morning (whatever that means).
This is not a woman. This is a walking Facebook profile.
Thank goodness her Sacramento morning show has just brought in Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), a barking chauvinist, to lift the ratings and, consequently, educate Abby on how to conduct herself with the boringly handsome surgeon neighbor (Eric Winter) she’s just started seeing. She produces Mike’s segments. He produces her dates. Even though there’s no reason for Abby, with her principles and integrity, to like this (admittedly appealing) lout, little time is wasted foreshadowing the love Jacuzzi that awaits them.
The people responsible for “The Ugly Truth’’ - director Robert Luketic and screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, sharing a credit with Nicole Eastman - were also responsible for “Legally Blonde.’’ That must have been a once-in-a-lifetime thing since this new movie is only half as entertaining as the other one. Abby is not a terribly surprising or dynamic character. She’s a cliché. In “Legally Blonde,’’ Elle Woods’s dumbness was a neat rubber toy - pull on it, and it snaps. Abby’s intelligence is like stale Play-Doh. No one’s building a Broadway musical around that. Her sense of fun is doused with professionalism.
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