The Truth Isn’t So Ugly

I was skeptical walking into the movie theater to see The Ugly Truth this past Friday night. It looked pretty lame, and I don’t mean that “lame” as slang, I mean it as literally lame, limp. But, Katherine Heigl? Good. Gerard Butler? Better…so let’s give it a shot.

I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. No, the writing wasn’t amazing. It wasn’t a cinematic masterpiece. There were no shocking and brilliant plot twists - in fact, the plot was basically as predictable as I predicted. But, something saved it from being just another chick flick. It was funny. Really funny. Maybe the writing wasn’t mindblowing when it came to plot and development, but it was great dialogue. Lines that were quick, clever, and laugh-out-loud without being unrealistic lines that no one would actually say. The writing also managed to do something successfully that many movies fail to do, and that was making our main characters real. It’s hard to make people like Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler real, because they’re beautiful people, and most of us don’t look like them. But here they were just the right amount of self deprecating to make us believe they were normal and human, but not too much that it was blatant that that was what they were trying to do. This managed to make the whole romcom formula of boy always gets girl just a little more realistic and believable. Which made certain gags in the film that much more hilarious. And perhaps the biggest test of all, the chemistry between Heigl and Butler? Pretty perfect. I not only believed them together, I wanted them to be together.

Obviously, “real” critics, newspaper critics, will pan this movie. It’s a romcom, it was critically doomed from the onset. But, when it comes to movies that will make you laugh and feel good and have fun, do you really listen to those old, stuffy reviews? Those guys hate fun movies. The more they hate it, the more fun you’ll have. And they’ll really hate this one. But, you can’t see heavy, deep, dark movies all the time. What about date night? Girls’ night out? A fun, casual Friday night movie? This is the perfect choice.

July 27th, 2009 by Courtney Iseman | Posted in Reviews | (2)