A National Lampoon Belated Review: The Ugly Truth

by Richard

At the conclusion of a movie, it is customary for viewers to composedly gather their belongings, unassumingly dispose of their leftover food on the theater floor, and calmly make their way toward the exit. Less frequently, viewers may feel compelled to linger on a while longer in order to observe a particularly engaging or plot-driven credit reel, as is the case with The Hangover or Se7en or Speed Racer.

In even rarer circumstances, viewers may become desirous to hurtle themselves from their seats at momentous speed, pushing their tired bodies to perform death defying physical stunts as they maneuver over rows of obtrusive seating and hand rails, violently sacrificing life and limb to escape the unrelenting pain and suffering of the last two hours. This is the type of thing that happened after I saw The Ugly Truth.

The worst thing is that you can’t even talk about The Ugly Truth anymore by making a clever pun on the title, because every clever reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes has already discovered the effectiveness of doing that. Note, for example, Kam Williams’ inventive analysis that the film is “Ugly, and that’s the truth!” How creative and knowable! We can totally identify with that statement in the context of this movie! In retrospect, had I chosen to review the film at an early date instead of seeing another romantic comedy (Orphan), I might have had creative license to say “Katherine Heigl Discovers the Ugly Truth about Bottled Water in Revealing Rom-Com.” (SPOILER: Bottled water and its discontents is the primary focus of The Ugly Truth).

Without resorting to ingenious wordplay, The Ugly Truth is about a controlling bitch named Katherine Heigl who society allows to be a controlling bitch because she has a job and is apparently competent at doing this job, like in the way men are usually competent at doing jobs. This job is News Producer, and the reason we know she is competent at producing news is that she is able to calm down people who become upset after discovering they have mistakenly eaten duck instead of chicken. (SPOILER: People who become upset after discovering they have mistakenly eaten duck instead of chicken are women).

However bitchy and controlling and discerning between duck and chicken she may be, Katherine Heigl is not very good at getting ratings, which is surprising considering how exhilarating many of her segments are, particularly the ones where people are cooking duck instead of chicken. That is why Katherine Heigl’s bosses who are men decide to bring in Gerard Butler, who hosts a really eye-opening show about how men like to get blow jobs, and this show is somehow broadcast on the public access channel where children and old people can see.

Gerard Butler is not as controlling and bitchy as Katherine Heigl, which should be obvious because he is a man, but we also know this because he wears the same track suit in every scene. Moreover, the reason we know he is so competent at doing his job—besides the fact that he is a man—is that he is able to make two seasoned and professional anchorpeople start having sex with each other on the air, which is what all seasoned and professional anchorpeople are wont to do.

At this point in the film my sister asked the important and embarrassing question “Are they, like, going to end up together or something?” Because my sister needs those kinds of things made very obvious, not only in the trailer and opening credits and marketing campaign and classification of genre but in the actual narrative as well. Luckily for her, this point is established when Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler make a deal never to do any work every again, or if they do decide to discuss work it has to be at Outback Steakhouse, and also that Katherine Heigl has to do everything that Gerard Butler tells her to do or else she won’t be able to bag the Perfect Man, aka a man who like cats better than dogs and who knows the secret of restaurant tap water.

You see, Gerard Butler is so good at knowing the truth about men’s and women’s behavior. For example, he knows that if you hang up on somebody, that person will probably call back in order to know why you hung up on them or if it was just a dropped call or something. He also knows that network bosses really like it when their employees discuss all work-related business at Outback Steakhouse or whilst shopping for cocktail dresses.

The rest of the film is concerned with two narrative threads: Thread #1: Katherine Heigl does everything that Gerard Butler tells her to do—and it is worse than Twilight! Meanwhile, there are a number of engaging scenes, like the one where Katherine Heigl and her new boyfriend go hiking, and this scene is composed of stock footage from the government-sponsored commercials for the State of Virginia.

Thread #2 concerns the social function of Craig Ferguson and the effects of appearing on the Craig Ferguson Show. For example, did you know that The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson is the number one platform by which news networks audition potential anchors, and that every time someone appears on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, they are actually auditioning for a spot on a local news network? Neither did I!! Also, let it be known that after you appear on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, you become a really good dancer at an LA nightclub. Nice!

Now it is time to discuss the End of the Movie. A great many IMDB naysayers out there and a great many more reputable critics are of the opinion that the ending of The Ugly Truth is “contrived.” According to the internet, “contrived” can be defined as “Obviously planned or calculated; not spontaneous or natural; labored.” Now let’s consider this definition in the context of The Ugly Truth.

Let us say, hypothetically, that there is a hot air balloon festival, and that this hot air balloon festival is such a big deal for local thrill-seekers that all news stations are obligated to cover it, and also that being in a hot air balloon is a romantic sort of activity two people can do together. Let us also say that it is some kind of law where news stations have to broadcast every moment of footage where hot air balloons are concerned, no questions asked. Also, it is quite within an anchor’s contractual right to switch networks right in the middle of a broadcast.

So then, if two news people from different networks happen to be at the same hot air balloon festival, and one of them is talking about the other one on air, and then the other one switches to that network to confront her and then they’re all in the same hot air balloon and cameras must keep rolling and GREEN SCREEN, then how is that in any way shape or form contrived? That’s right: it is.

Also, BOTTLED WATER AND TAP WATER ARE PRETTY MUCH THE SAME THING BUT WITH DIFFERENT PRICE TAGS. Gerard Butler knows this, and that is why Katherine Heigl knows he is THE ONE, and also because when they were in a hot air balloon together it would have been awkward and uncomfortable for either one to reject the other one. This is the principle point you should take away from the The Ugly Truth, and you should do it before you are compelled to suffer self-inflicted injuries while exiting the movie theater.