About three quarters of the way through The Ugly Truth, I sat bolt upright, turned to Bryan and Julie and said “This movie is terrible.”
I’m pretty sure that the only reason we made it all the way through The Ugly Truth is that right before starting it, we watched about five minutes of Taintlight on Netflix instant streaming. Taintlight is a Twilight parody that is, in terms of quality, on the same level as The Room, but without the unintentionally funny parts that keep people coming back to The Room. Taintlight’s average rating on Netflix is one star. One star! Netflix doesn’t let you rate a movie any less than one star. The only reason we even turned it on is because we were trying to figure out if with this movie Netflix was now streaming soft core porn. It’s not, I think. There plenty of soft core porn set-ups in the first five minutes, but they don’t pay off. Taintlight is a failure on every level. The acting is terrible. The writing is worse. If you make it all the way through Taintlight, let me know. I’ll nominate you for whatever is the movie watching equivalent of a Purple Heart.
It really is a stretch to call The Ugly Truth a romantic comedy. For one, there’s not much romance between the main two characters. Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler spend most of The Ugly Truth hating each other, but (and SPOILERS here…if you care) after two sips of a mixed drink and a Latin dance, Katherine Heigl is all over Gerard Butler in the hotel elevator like a drunk bridesmaid at a wedding after party.
The story in The Ugly Truth comes across like the first draft of a bad spec script. The writing is completely on the nose. No one means anything other than EXACTLY what they’re saying. The funniest parts of the movie are all in the trailer, and the trailer wasn’t exactly big on the jokes.
Avoid this movie. Not only is The Ugly Truth bad, but after playing the movie, my PS3 refused to run the Netflix instant streaming disc. The Playstation 3 basically said “Taintlight? The Ugly Truth? No. No. No. No more. Uh-uh.” I originally blamed this problem on the recently released PS3 firmware update 3.42, but I’m more than certain that Taintlight and The Ugly Truth are the real culprits here.