Between Raunchy And The Rom-Com Lies...

Rating: 9/10 (27 March 2018)

...the (moderately) raunchy rom-com! And friends and movie buffs, it works wonderfully well.
You already know what it's about. Rom-coms have one basic pattern, the one that's propelled approximately half the fiction in human history: 1) Boy meets girl. 2) Boy loses girl. 3) Boy gets girl - albeit with laughs. This one conforms in all the usual respects, but we mustn't stop there.
"The Ugly Truth" provides more sincerely funny moments per unit time than I would have dreamed possible. Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl prove to have wonderful screen chemistry. Each one's presence is enhanced by the presence of the other. What's unique and refreshing about the movie is how artfully it weaves, in and between and around the laughs, a poignant insight about love: how BLEEP!ing irrational it is.
Yes, some men are looking for T'n'A. Yes, some women carry checklists to which a suitor must conform to be seriously considered. But the wildly, totally absurd, delightful truth about it all, as Mike and Abby illustrate for us, is one we should all bear in mind as we navigate our personal minefields of the heart:
You can't hunt it down, you can't predict it, and you can't rationalize it. Love just is.
It's not a "great" movie. It's not "Citizen Kane" or "Casablanca." But you'll love it to death. Bravo!