Romantic Comedies are one of cinema’s more troubling genres. Why? Well, because the bar has been set high by classic films dating right back to films like His Girl Friday, Some Like It Hot (sort of a romantic comedy) and Bringing Up Baby. Also, they’re incredibly easy to do badly, and this is proved several times every year. Finally, they are monumentally formulaic and so it is difficult to really come up with an original one, since all suspense is completely absent, since whoever is playing the two lead roles will end up together. The fact that so many film-makers seem to try and make the two lead characters ostensibly polar opposites in spite of this simply makes my second point stronger. Why bother? They’re going to end up together, so the least we can do is a) like them and b) believe that they might at least like each other.
If you’re going to be a successful lead actress in a movie like this then you have to have the Ryan Magic. Meg Ryan is surely the prototype for the perfect rom-com female lead. Why? Because she has impeccable comic timing and she is literally leaking ‘girl-next-door’ charm and beauty all over the screen. Obviously she is far too attractive to live next door to anyone, but she manages to carry off being exceedingly pretty without being so beautiful that she out-prices herself from everyone but the stupidly handsome. In recent years Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston have taken the torch, although despite Aniston’s comic timing (which is criminally under-rated in my opinion) and Diaz’s quirky hilarity and genuine willingness (sometimes determination) to not take herself too seriously – neither of them quite manage to match Meg Ryan in her prime. Anyway, now that my love of Meg Ryan is out in the open, let’s talk about why Katherine Heigl doesn’t have the magic.
I don’t have anything against Katherine Heigl by the way, but she isn’t right for this role. Firstly, she is stunningly beautiful. Normally, if I heard the kind of things I’d heard about Heigl in the press about anyone else, I would have trouble seeing through what a nightmare they apparently are in their personal lives to find them attractive. However, in her case I am prepared to make an exception. She’s so striking that she practically mugs you in your seat. That being the case, the idea that she would have any trouble finding a man is obviously ridiculous. But the film-makers have made this the basic premise of her character, and so to make up for her looks, they have had to find another way to make it believable that she might have trouble finding love. And they have chosen to do this by making her character absolutely a) mental, and b) annoying. Now, Meg Ryan did slightly mental in When Harry Met Sally, but that was Meg Ryan in the 80s playing off Billy Crystal and she didn’t seem to have any trouble finding blokes who fancied her, despite her being a bit off the boil upstairs.
However, Katherine Heigl’s character, Abby, is an absolute train wreck, and it’s played to the point where you actually cannot imagine a guy ever falling for her. Now, obviously as the movie goes along, we get to know her a bit better, and as per romantic comedy formula, there is a moment at which she breaks down and admits that she isn’t perfect. In this film, this plays out in a scene where she blurts out that she is in fact a control freak to her boyfriend. The example she uses is that she thinks the champagne should be chilled, when it wasn’t. She then says “that’s how much of a control freak I am,” and this is a silly point to make, because thinking that champagne should be chilled is so far from just how bad she is, (illustrated painfully in her first blind date) that it’s like her scooping up a handful of water and claiming to be a marine biologist. But still, you know the drill, she’s a sweet person really and blah blah blah, so by the end of the film we realise that she wasn’t all that bad really. I feel I should ask if we’re going to end up liking the character, why make her so completely unlikable in the first place?
This is why films like When Harry Met Sally work. You like the characters. They’re not perfect, but you like them. You’ve Got Mail is another example of this. It’s a really good romantic comedy because we like both characters, and they like each other, and the thing that gets in the way is an external problem that can be easily overcome, in this case, she owns a small bookshop and he opens a giant corporate bookstore which threatens to shut her down. But that’s all external and material – in The Ugly Truth, the difference between the characters is that they are fundamentally incompatible and they don’t like each other, and the audience doesn’t like them either. Why do that? Just give them some other obstacle to overcome, people like that. Seriously, if you’re going to make romantic comedies, watch more Meg Ryan movies.
As for Gerard Butler, I hadn’t seen him in anything else really, and so I don’t know if he was good in 300, but he comes across as a decent enough actor; even though he’s playing a misogynistic arsehole, he puts his back into it for the most part, although it does affect his performance somewhat that he never really seems happy inhabiting the character he’s been given. Katherine Heigl said that one of her problems with Knocked Up was that it was sexist – something I think she might have thought twice about saying since a) she was in it, which means they must have given her a script at some point, and b) it’s not actually true. Anyway, I think I see the point she was trying to make, and it is illustrated more by Butler’s character in this movie than it is by Knocked Up. Katherine Heigl’s character is a nightmare of epic proportions – it’s plausible that Wes Craven in his prime couldn’t have come up with a scarier character. Why? Because she basically adheres to every stereotypically “terrifying” female character trait. By the end of the movie, she has overcome them and is basically manageable. Butler, on the other hand, is a misogynistic “man-whore” (as Abby calls him) and yet with a crafty wink and a moment where he’s relatively nice to a kid, he comes across as just a bit of a jack-the-lad joker, carefree and doing his own thanng. So we end up liking him and yet he’s just as unpleasant as Abby. This is a trend that does turn up in the Apatow movies to a certain extent, and I suppose it’s there in Knocked Up between Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, but not between Seth Rogen’s character and Heigl’s. Anyway, this movie isn’t as good as Knocked Up, so maybe films should try to be more like that one. I don’t know. Or maybe this movie should have Paul Rudd in it. Of course, if you ask me, maybe every movie should have Paul Rudd in it. He’s brilliant.
All that being said, it does plenty of things right. I wasn’t in stitches all the way through, but it’s pleasant enough with the occasional chuckle, and at least one genuinely laugh-out-loud moment. Cheryl Hines and John Michael Higgins are funny throughout, Nate Corddry is in it, which is a good thing because he’s a good actor so it’s nice to see him getting work, although he’s under-used. Overall, maybe because I was in the mood for a film that didn’t require too much brain energy from me, I liked it. It does get some things wrong, most notably in the restaurant scene, which is set up well and quite funny, but ruined by a line that should never have been in there (you’ll know what I mean when you see it). But overall, I liked it. I especially liked the part at the end (I don’t want to spoil it here, but they get together) when Butler admits that he is in love with Heigl. She asks him why, and at this point we expect a When Harry Met Sally kind of spiel, and we don’t get it. His answer is excellent, and for a film like this, quite a brave move on the part of the scriptwriters. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not Citizen Kane or anything but it’s an interesting moment and a relatively fresh twist on the old formula.
In the grand pantheon of romantic comedies, this is not the worst, but it certainly isn’t the best either. For starters, the part of the show that pleased and excited me the most was the trailer for 500 Days of Summer, which stars both Matthew Gray Gubler and Zooey Deschanel, and therefore I will be going to see it regardless of whether it looks good or not. But also, it looks good. Bonus! So my advice is, go and see that instead of The Ugly Truth; but if you do have to go and see The Ugly Truth, you probably won’t mind it.
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