the ugly truth, or...uh...wow.

The Ugly Truth: movie starring katherine heigl and gerard butler

living in the 21st century in america during the vacation between semesters, pretty much jobless, entails certain responsibilities. for instance, i have netflix. i have a computer. if netflix has both the entire avatar: the last airbender series AND the full eight seasons of red dwarf available instantly, i have a duty to watch them, because i have the time, the inclination, and am circumstanced to be able to do so. this may not be the greatest of all my possible obligations, but it's somewhere on the list.

anyway, in between watching seasons and seasons of awesome sci-fi/fantasy shows, i have taken to giving myself mental breaks of the romantic comedy variety. this is where the ugly truth comes in: i have freely given of myself in the pursuit of excellent t.v. for my country, and in return my country has made the ugly truth for me.

thank you, america.

okay, is what happened to katherine heigl that everyone thought she was hot hot hot and then suddenly they all found out she smoked and now she has less of a career? cuz that's just weird. she's still gorgeous, but there's no way that the ugly truth didn't take a bite out of her pride. and gerard butler...welllll, ANYTHING, including porn, is a step up from ANY joel schumacher film (not to say that butler's phantom wasn't entirely the best thing about phantom of the opera...aside from raoul's haircut). i didn't much care for 300, plus i liked his performance in the ugly truth, so...he can be commended for what he did in the ugly truth. in my opinion. which counts for so much.

it wasn't that heigl didn't have moments where her acting was pretty fabulous. but butler pretty much forged a character out of nothing, and for that i sing, "go go gerard butler!" to the tune of that power rangers themesong.

in fact, i kind of think that the main thing wrong with the ugly truth is a massive failure of the rom-com plot algorithm that brought us such films as love actually. the characters are kind of cute--nothing we haven't seen before, but cute. it was a moderately interesting premise--guy who doesn't fit the "list" points out the list and tightly wound girl sacrifices her standards for true love (that part was less interesting--poor katherine heigl). sort of he's just not that into you meets hope floats...

meets in the mouth of madness. obvious, inexplicable plot holes, such as the one about why heigl's character is still in sacramento, being answered by a few oblique references to some sort of familial tie to the t.v. station (or did i miss something?)--i mean, what was that whole part of the plot doing there? did they just forget to tie up that loose end? it's not like they had to put in the full explanation for why heigl-character hasn't gone to the big city to broadcast--we all know, because we've seen it a thousand times, that she's in sacramento because her dad or someone inspired her to get into t.v. production and used to be the producer of the show that she now runs...but it's just creepy that that information isn't actually in the script. same type of thing with the question craig ferguson asks of gerard butler in regards to who the woman was that made him so bitter: butler takes away from the camera in an obvious moment of remembered heartache over one girl--ex-fiancee who cheated with his best friend, ex-wife who cheated with his best friend, someone who cheated with his best friend, THERE IS NO OTHER EXPLANATION that can come out of that look--and then later tells heigl's character that it wasn't one girl who cheated with his best friend but rather a series of women looking for a list of attributes. now, the series of women explanation is much more interesting than the cheated-with-his-best-friend girl explanation, but it isn't possible as a sequel to the look that he's taken away from the camera earlier.

there are three solutions to this problem: 1. the script wasn't finished before the scene was filmed. 2. the script was finished, but unfortunately the director was too busy doing very very hard drugs to finish reading it before the scene was filmed. 3. we are entering a post-apocalyptic world in which even the fictions that prop up our existence are losing their integrity. the equations that write our entertainment for us are failing us miserably.

in which case i say, "FOR GOD'S SAKE, FIX THE ALGORITHM!!! FIX IT NOW!!! WHO KNOWS WHERE THIS PATH MAY LEAD IF WE DON'T GET OFF IT QUICK??! NEXT YOU'LL BE TELLING ME THAT GERMANY CAN'T AFFORD ROOMS FULL OF MONKEYS WITH TYPEWRITERS IN ORDER TO PEN BACKSTREET BOYS SONGS!!!" i mean, besides which, if the logarithms that shore up this reality are losing their force, how am i going to be able to finish red dwarf? c'mon, america. don't fail me now.