Variety
"Butler gives Mike an affable, lived-in quality that quickly takes the edge of the character's deliberate abrasiveness..." 07/18/2009Hollywood Reporter
"Both Heigl and Butler find the appeal in very flawed characters. It has been said that every memorable romantic movie requires a scene where the lovers dance together, and Luketic has staged an effervescent dance for the stars." 07/23/2009 Total Film
3 stars out of 5 -- "[Butler] has charisma in spades....Butler and Heigl sizzle nicely together in a script that steers away from cutesy in favour of potty-mouthed put-downs..." 07/23/2009 Chicago Sun-Times 7 of 10
Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler are so pleasant in The Ugly Truth that it's a shame to spoil their party. But toil and try as they do, the comedy bogs down in relentless predictability and the puzzling overuse of naughty words...Once the movies were forbidden to drop the f-word at all, but in this one, it's only an opening salvo in a potty-mouth bombing run. Heigl plays Abby, producer of the early morning news on a Sacramento station that is operated like no other station in the history of television. Anchored by a bickering married couple, the broadcast is tanking in the ratings, and so her boss forces Abby to bring in Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), a macho local cable personality whose ideas about the battle of the sexes date back to about Alley Oop...On his first appearance, he departs from his script, diagnoses the anchor as the victim of his control-freak wife and suggests they've probably stopped sleeping together. "This is great!" the station manager raves, despite that the that segment runs so long, it steps on the first five minutes of the network morning slot...There's one scene with real comic possibilities, but it doesn't pay off. Mike gives her a pair of remote-controlled, battery-powered vibrating panties. (Yes, they actually manufacture such items. Isn't the Web a useful resource?) Abby, the silly girl, foolishly decides to wear these to a business dinner and takes along the remote control, for reasons it is hard to explain. A kid at a nearby table grabs the remote control. We all know what's coming, and Heigl makes a real effort, but I'm afraid Meg Ryan's restaurant orgasm in When Harry Met Sally remains the gold standard in this rare but never boring category...The TV news as portrayed in the film makes Anchorman -- The Legend of Ron Burgundy look like a documentary. Every segment can run as long as necessary. Macho Mike ad libs everything. Yes, he's good for ratings, but if after a few days, he's really pulling in a 12 in the 5 a.m. hour, in prime time he would outscore the Oscars. And TV cameras do not usually follow newsmen out of the studio and into the street and watch whatever they do -- although if it were funnier, we might not mind...Again, Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler are awfully nice here but the movie does them in. Amazing that this raunchy screenplay was written by three women. At its conclusion, I am forced to report, it provides abundant evidence of my belief that a good movie has rarely featured a hot-air balloon. - Roger Ebert
ReelViews 6 of 10
Hollywood, it seems, has lost the knack of how to make a good romantic comedy. The best two such films of 2009, Adventureland and (500) Days of Summer, have come down the indie trail. The major studios are unwilling to fund any production that doesn't adhere to a rom-com formula that is becoming tired more as a result of misuse than overuse. These movies still sell a fantasy but it has become more a case of putting together two attractive individuals and telling the audience they're falling in love than taking the time to develop interesting characters and build the romance. The Ugly Truth is a perfect example of the former approach. The only thing that differentiates it from far too many other uninspired rom-coms is that some of the material is funny and there is an occasional edge to the repartee. Beyond that, however, it's a cookie-cutter movie, and the cookies are pretty stale...The Ugly Truth is as review-proof in its own way as any teen-oriented summer blockbuster. It's a neatly packaged product that comes with all the consumer friendly safety labels. The comedy, as sophomoric as it often is, relieves some of the boredom of the generic love story, which might have been more interesting if it had followed up on the bits of The Taming of the Shrew, Pygmalion, and Cyrano De Bergerac that it toys with. Admittedly, mentioning those three titles makes The Ugly Truth sound more interesting than it is because they're ultimately little more than window dressing. The movie is more like a re-make than something new, but many viewers find comfort in the familiar, and this is for them. For my part, if I want to re-visit this formula, I'll head for the DVD shelf, where better interpretations of the same basic story exist. - James Berardinelli
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