Word: heigl
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...Hollywood wrong in putting its money on Katherine Heigl to be the next Julia Roberts? Heigl, a large, pretty actress of farm-girl robustness and pale orange skin and hair tones, had emerged from the cast of Grey's Anatomy to serve as Seth Rogen's femme foil in the surprise hit Knocked Up, then scored on her own as the perpetual bridesmaid in 27 Dresses. More than Reese Witherspoon and Kate Hudson, her prime rivals among early-30s contenders for the Roberts ring, Heigl radiated a pensive solidity that, if properly exploited, could have spurred the return...
...speak in the past tense, since Heigl comes near to emptying her reserves of goodwill with a disastrous new concoction called The Ugly Truth. In its wan attempt to be raunchy, the picture fails where Judd Apatow has usually succeeded; written by three women, this is a girl's mistaken idea of an R-rated comedy. Heigl, as star and executive producer, doesn't do herself any favors either. She spends virtually the entire movie getting mocked up and knocked out. (See TIME's review of (500) Days of Summer...
...Here, as in her two earlier starring roles, Heigl is an efficient professional who has no luck finding men. Her Abby is the producer of a Sacramento TV news show whose ratings skyrocket when the on-air team is joined by Mike (Gerard Butler), the host of a late-night cable program called The Ugly Truth. Mike is a macho man with a Cro-Magnon spin on sex, telling his female listeners, "We fall in love with your tits and your ass. And we stick around for what you're gonna do with them." Desperate...
...comedy trope, the falling-in-love-on-the-dance-floor scene. (The film's one decent moment: an elevator kiss.) And as long as he's doing an R-rated comedy, shouldn't he observe one off the genre's cardinal rules and have someone go topless? If not Heigl, then Butler, whose magnificently bulked-up chest was one of the attractions...
...misogyny. Then again, everything goes awry here. A restaurant scene with Abby wearing vibrating underpants (a gloss on Meg Ryan's fake orgasm in When Harry Met Sally) is an embarrassment; the R-rated jokes earn only smirks; even the obligatory falling-in-love dance number gets botched. Blame Heigl, who's also an executive producer of the film. After Knocked Up and 27 Dresses she seemed primed to be the new Sandra Bullock, but this debacle makes Bullock's lame The Proposal shine like a screwball-comedy...