A bit too cynical, and mean spirited for my liking.

Rating: 5/10 (31 January 2010)

The Ugly Truth passed the time for me easily enough, but it was a bit too bland tasting for my liking. I liked the idea of the message, The Ugly Truth was trying to send out, but it did it in a mean spirited way. I'm a male, but believe in the respect of a woman, and this movie basically trashes them. The crude sequence of a kid holding a vibrator remote or whatever it was in the restaurant, turned out to be more disgusting, more then anything else, completely inappropriate in my opinion. Katharne Heigl is a very charismatic actress, but she can only do so much with the material, same goes to Gerad Butler. I didn't like the concept of the movie to be honest. Having A woman lie about her true identity, and who she is, to get the guy, didn't seem true at all to me, I always believe you should be who you are. Heigl and Butler's chemistry carry this movie farther then it should have gone, because this is a pretty ugly movie, and very hard to like. It's original, and the idea had potential, but they did it for all the wrong reasons, and in the end, I didn't care for it, even if it did pass the time.
Performances. Katherine Heigl is beautiful, and makes for a very charming lead, just like she did in 27 Dresses. Here she is robbed, with the nasty material, and as a result her charisma can only take her so far. Gerard Butler is a guy who i've been high on now, for quite a while. His charisma is off the charts, and manages to make a potentially unlikable character, into a heart throb for the woman, and someone to root for, with the fellow guys. Eric Winter is a somewhat likable, if a little bland love interest of Heigl's. Cheryl Hines may be familiar to "Curb Your Enthusaism" fans, and she did fine here.
Bottom line. The Ugly truth, is ugly all right, and that really hurt the film in the end for me. It's not a terrible film, far from it, just a rather average one, that's too cynical for my liking. Worth a look, but there are better Rom Com's out there.
5/10