The Ugly Truth’s title — as so many others before — suggests the movie’s aim to answer the ultimate question: how do men (and television ratings) work? At least that’s what Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy, 27 Dresses) and her counterpart Gerard Butler (300, P.S. I Love You) are trying to make you believe.

The last time I saw Katherine Heigl in a movie, she was flitting around in twenty-seven layers of bridesmaids’ dresses, wrapped in needy doormat characterization and a cocoon of predictability and lameness. Not much has changed there, except for a slightly bustier cocoon of predictability and not quite as much layers of dresses. What had a whiff of cuteness and personality in “Knocked Up” from 2007 (needles to say, I was surprised), has degenerated to a mediocre and soulless portrayal, in the context of blatant nothingness aka “The Ugly Truth”. I can’t blame her for the poor script, but I can’t deny that I feel confirmed in my cynical presumption that she takes whatever role a well-paying producer tosses at her. Her only resort for halfway serious acting remains “Grey’s Anatomy”, which — as I was told — she had the sense to stay with for another season.

The premise is told quickly:
SHE: pseudo-sophisticated career woman
HE: the moronic alpha male with a secret soft core
SHE: searches for Prince Charming in her slightly ditzy, girly ways
HE: instructing her in the art of “How To Get Your Guy”

Can you guess what happens? Can you? I bet you can.

I don’t want you to think that I despise Romantic Comedy as a matter of principle — I don’t. Yet I can’t help but take “The Ugly Truth” as a validation of my ritual of getting into an absolutely expectation-free mind set whenever I sit my derrière into the stuffy multiplex seat in anticipation of Romedy. Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl might be decent actors, but the Romedy business is a slippery slope unless you score in the 1-in-10 good production per year in that genre.

The plot of “The Ugly Truth” is weak and astoundingly unoriginal, with a climax that comes flying at you out of nowhere and hits you like a soaking wet newspaper sheet in the park. The humor is so cheap at most points, my grandmother couldn’t get a better deal with her 30,000 coupons: from naked tree-hanging to remote-controlled lingerie. I believe the only time I so much as smiled was at a tiny “tap water”-themed “punch line” that you saw running into your direction from two miles afar, waving and hooting. …Like that excruciatingly annoying relative you see once a year, but who then surprisingly turns out to be not so bad in the end.

In conclusion: The title fits, after all