'The Ugly Truth' review

Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl (Credit: Saeed Adyani/Sony)

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Cinematic battles of the sexes

Man. Woman. War.

Morning talkshow producer Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) is an uptight control freak with impeccably high standards for her ideal match. Public access host Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler) is a chauvinistic boor who preaches that men only care about sex. So of course they have a lot to teach each other. When Abby’s bosses at “A.M. Sacramento” add Mike to the on-air team she flips out, but soon enough she’s using him for dating advice to score with her seemingly perfect single doctor neighbor (Eric Winter). The closer they get, the quicker Mike and Abby are bound to realize that opposites really do attract. Especially in movies like this.

The buzz: “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” and yet they can’t live without each other! Ain’t it crazy!? By now it’s a well-worn concept, and director Robert Luketic’s knack for delivering commercially successful but creatively shrugworthy formula films like “Monster-in-Law” and “21” doesn’t inspire much confidence that “The Ugly Truth” will find a fresh angle for it. But what does that mean for Heigl and Butler, who are at similar career points—they both need to make good on their star potential by delivering a hit film, or risk becoming yesterday’s news. Will audiences respond to their proudly R-rated romantic comedy just over a month after “The Proposal” scored big by selling cute over crass?

The verdict: Consider the Katy Perry song that plays over the opening credits an honest warning: no, the movie you’re about to see will not have any more depth than a Katy Perry song. Shiny but shallow, peppy but pat, “The Ugly Truth” has plenty of energy but not much in the way of brains, and even less heart. The stars are OK, but no better, failing to generate much spark together or on their own. Heigl borders on grating in a role that’s exhaustingly type-A, while Butler does little to define himself as a compelling leading man. The movie threatens to get interesting when Abby frets about compromising her professional ethics in exchange for the ratings boost Mike’s antics give her show, but the idea that Abby’s career could be more important than whether or not she fakes an orgasm is too much for the movie to even consider. (How else could her sexual satisfaction be played for cheap laughs in a lame reworking of the famous deli scene from “When Harry Met Sally…”?) “The Ugly Truth” is too polished and professionally by-the-numbers to represent rock bottom in the battle of the sexes genre, but with material this mundane it’s hard not to wish someone would’ve put up a better fight.

Did you know? Heigl and Luketic have already reunited for an action-comedy-romance slated for release next summer: “Five Killers,” which pairs Heigl with Ashton Kutcher.

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