Popcorn Post: The Ugly Truth? More Like An Ugly Movie.

So here we are. This years' "Men are from mars; women are from venus"- type movie is upon us. The setting for this film is the among wonderful glitz and glamour of the American TV Scene.

The male, sex-crazy, chauvinist character in this movie is played by the ever-increasingly-irksome Gerard Butler. Named Mike Chadway, he "anchors" [or to put it more accurately, just rabbits forever through what looks like a £4.99 digital camera from Argos] a show called "The Ugly Truth" on a small network channel.
TV Producer Abby Richter [Katherine Heigl] has a morning show that's struggling; and her bosses have threatened to axe the show because of its boring, watered down nature.

And hey presto [as if you didn't think this would happen], the sharp-talking chauvinist gets a slot on the morning show, against Richter's wishes, and the magic [or so it's meant to be] begins. Chadway proves an instant hit, but, sticking to her guns, our heroine doesn't have a word of it.

... Until Mike issues her an ultimatum.

Abby meets her new neighbour; a doctor named Colin [who first appears half naked in his first scene], who she takes a little more than a shining to. Mike [in his role as god of the male mind (and seeing as he thinks that all men think with their penises, it would be fair to think of him as the god of all c*cks)] makes a pact- if he gets her together with Colin, she has to respect him. But if he fails, he has to quit his job.

And as expected, it all goes to plan. Until the big switcharoo in the plot near the end...

As I may have previously mentioned in this review, Butler annoys me. In this movie, he tries to adopt an American accent to portray the TV presenter. Does he succeed? Not in the least. His accent isn't even the worst part- his portrayal of the chauvinist is completely horrible. With a character like this, a lot of humour is needed. The timing needs to be spot on, and the comedy needs to work, if the person isn't to be perceived as a complete and utter ar*e.
Props, though, to Katherine Heigl. She tries to cope as much as he can with Butler's 2D performance, and she lightens the movie up somewhat.

Craig Ferguson makes a cameo appearance in the movie. His scene is fraught with inaccuracy, unbelievability, and just general shoddy work [none of which is his fault, may I add]. But because this is a film review, and not a review comparing the REAL "Late Late Show" to staged versions of "The Late Late Shoe", I won't launch further into it.

To Summarise: The storyline sucks, the acting from the male lead is sickeningly horrible, the acting from the female lead tries [but fails] to prop the film up, and the film actually isn't that funny. To be quite honest, all there is eye-candy [Heigl's cleavage for the boys, and Butler's "rugged good looks" for the girls].
Not worth the celluloid it's printed on.

Rating: 4/10