As some of you may know by now, when it comes to
Gerard Butler, I react to him on a cellular level.
This may skew my reaction to a film like
The Ugly Truth, which is getting stinkeroo reviews from critics - and enthusiastic endorsement from filmgoers.
Katherine Heigl plays Abby, a successful TV producer but unsuccessful dater.
She inherits Mike (Gerard Butler,) a low-rent shock jock who tells The Ugly Truth on his call-in show. The truth as he sees it regarding the battle of the sexes, that is.
Abby's boss wants the ratings Mike is guaranteed to pull in.
Abby wants to date her new neighbor, hunky doctor Colin (
Eric Winter) without destroying her chances before they even begin.
Mike offers to coach her past her own dismal track record if she'll give his show a chance.
Here's the thing. Even though we follow Abby more than we follow Mike, the film is really presented from Mike's male point of view. This is a how-to-find-true-love romantic comedy told through a jaded man's focus - an outlook that is raunchy, obnoxious and unrepentent.
What I find really strange is the derision handed out to
The Ugly Truth by critics, when I laughed throughout the movie - and so did everyone in the theatre.
So here's a battle of the critics versus the filmgoers.
Peter Travers from
Rolling Stone gives it half a star out of four stars.
"Katherine Heigl once complained that Judd Apatow's Knocked Up, in which she starred, was way too guy-centric and made the women humorless shrews. Heigl owes Apatow an apology. The Ugly Truth, Heigl's new romcom, is the real sexist swill."
Internet Movie Data Base user
michelem3 says,
"I saw this movie at a preview event last Friday night and it was hilarious. The sold out cinema was laughing hysterically throughout the movie. Butler has great comedic timing complimenting his tough guy persona. If you are expecting to see a typical romantic comedy you will be surprised, because this R rated film is geared toward the men in the audience as well as the ladies. Grab your significant other and be prepared to laugh and enjoy the movie together."
Jason Anderson for
The Toronto Star gives it one and a half stars out of four.
"These reluctant co-workers declare a truce when a hunky surgeon moves into Abby's apartment complex and she solicits Mike's advice on how to land him. Imagine what follows as George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion except with a potty-mouthed Henry Higgins instructing Eliza Doolittle on how to dress more like a stripper."
From IMDB user
LadyMacbeth75:
"I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. My husband was happy to watch a romantic comedy from the male perspective as well as the female for a change. The typical fairy tale elements seem to go by the wayside here and we're left with a harsher but very funny battle-of-the-sexes comedy for the times in which we now live." 
Manohla Dargis from the
New York Times writes:
"That tap-tap-tapping sound you hear is another nail being driven into the coffin of the romantic comedy. Which leads to The Ugly Truth, a cynical, clumsy, aptly titled attempt to cross the female-oriented romantic comedy with the male-oriented gross-out comedy that is interesting on several levels, none having to do with cinema."
IMDB user
tomjanjess says:
"I have not laughed so much over a movie as I did watching The Ugly Truth. This film was hysterical. It is a must see movie for both men and women. The scene in the restaurant just about sent me into a fit. I could not stop laughing. The baseball scene was just as funny. Guys would relate to a lot of the scenes in this movie. I cannot understand how the critics rate a movie poorly when the audience was roaring with laughter from beginning to end."
Liam Lacey from the
Globe and Mail gives it one star out of four:
"If Doris Day and Rock Hudson had made jokes about vibrating panties and fellatio at the ballpark, just think how much funnier their romantic comedies would have been. That appears to have been the brainwave behind The Ugly Truth. The script was written by three women. They try desperately to copy Judd Apatow's recipe for romantic raunch but succeed only in reversing his snigger-to-flinch ratio." 
IMDB user
tabuno says:
"This romantic comedy had two gut wrenching belly laugh scenes, along with a more in-your-face sexist look at the differences between men and women which in some ways could be closer to the truth than more 'enlightened' people may want to admit. It is understandable why most critics didn't have much positive to say, but these politically-incorrect sexist comments have at their core some resonance in how men and women actually feel and think. This is a movie that says what many of us want to say, but are afraid to admit, but also enlightens the mass audience with some actual relationship truths by the end of the movie. Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler do have their own chemistry and there is a hidden playfulness that comes out that for some critics might seem childishly crude, but in many respects is so real."As for myself...well...I could watch Gerry on the dance floor for hours but had to settle for a mere few minutes...
sigh...
CLICK HERE to watch the set-up scene from The Ugly Truth
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