2.5/4  not so ugly
I will give it to this movie I was not expecting this to be very good at all but hey im wrong ,the ugly thruth wasnt so ugly after all I liked it kept me tuned in all the way through and made me laugh a few times maybe I just like Gerad bu... (read full)

3/4  Pretty Funny
Surprisingly funny. The Ugly Truth is much funnier than a normal romantic comedy. Gerard Butler's accent is really strange in the movie but I managed to ignore it and focused on his being cute. Overall, a pretty good movie and worth a r... (read full)

3/4  Pretty Funny
Surprisingly funny. The Ugly Truth is much funnier than a normal romantic comedy. Gerard Butler's accent is really strange in the movie but I managed to ignore it and focused on his being cute. Overall, a pretty good movie and worth a r... (read full)

3/4  There's a Bird In My Dressing Room
Nicole Eastman needs a nod of approval for her silly romantic comedy about the differences between men and women. When Gerard Butler's face appeared on the screen in his ridiculous try for an American dialect, I just about wanted to walk ... (read full)

1/5 bad taste
  by rocky mt lady (colorado spgs, co)
Not the light hearted comedy I expected at all. But chalk this up to our present freedom of expression mentality. I expected LOTS more from these two actors. What you get is constant profanity and extreme sexual references. I found it worthless as a film. Very disappointing after seeing Gerald in PS I love you. and Katherine having numerous cute and funny romantic comedies under her belt. I found it offensive and disappointing. They had chemistry but needed a script that had vocabulary....

4/5 Cute
  by K. Kirkland (Phoenix)
A nice cute film but not one to be watched with little ones nearby! Lighthearted but hot at the same time.

2/5 Standard Rom-Com or Gross-Out Comedy? A Belabored Movie That Can't Make Up Its Mind
  by Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA)
This 2009 movie proves that women - in this case, screenwriters Nicole Eastman, Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith - can write romantic comedies just as poorly as men can. As directed by Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde), the idea behind this misfire is to cross-pollinate the most tired conventions of the female-focused genre with the sensibilities of the recent spate of raunchy, man-boy comedies, this latter genre having found its unequivocal leader in Judd Apatow. However, unlike Apatow, who has figured out how to make films that are insightful as well as funny like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up (ironically featuring this film's star, Katherine Heigl), Luketic shows no such finesse as everything in this film feels labored with the principal actors Heigl and Gerard Butler overplaying their opposites-attracts roles to near-cartoon proportions. Moreover, there are so many absurd gross-out gags inserted in this film that it feels like the creators (including executive producer Heigl) completely miscalculates who its target audience appears to be.

The strictly by-the-numbers plot centers on Abby Richter, an uptight, overachieving producer for a ratings-challenged morning talk show in, of all places, Sacramento. Her workplace is full of the stock characters you would expect in this type of formulaic movie - the demanding station manager, the show's vainglorious co-hosts with empty smiles and non-ironic deliveries, the inane segments that make up Abby's struggling show. Predictably, her personal life is burdened by an incessant, programmatic search for Mr. Right, and consequently, her one-time dates become a series of qualification interviews. Prospects don't look much better at work with her show's ratings, and so enters local cable-access celebrity, Mike Chadway, a chauvinist personality who regales in providing sexist advice on what men are really looking for in women. Naturally, it comes down to guys wanting nothing but sex and how women should do everything they can to encourage it.

Ratings rise based on the prurient content and Mike's unapologetic behavior, and even Abby recognizes his prowess in tapping into the public's psyche, so much so that on a stay-or-get-fired wager, Mike convinces her that he can be her Cyrano to help her land her neighbor, a handsome doctor who meets all of Abby's superficial qualifications. As tired as the premise sounds (and it is), the movie's pain points are exacerbated by the constant need to humiliate Abby, mainly through simulations of sexual acts in public. Obviously a knock-off of Meg Ryan's fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally..., the most notoriously contrived episode involves a pair of electronic panties that cause her to writhe uncontrollably in front of her corporate sponsors. Heigl seems to be playing the same model of efficiency in all her big-screen roles, and as Abby, she plays her stereotype on hyper-drive, for instance, hanging upside down from a tree in her underwear or doing her happy dance repeatedly.

Burying his Scottish brogue under an accent that sounds suspiciously like Mel Gibson's, Butler should be careful about accepting roles like Mike because he could turn into a Matthew McConaughey-type of actor, a promising career start (Dear Frankie) followed by bad commercially-driven choices. The other actors make little impression with even the comic talents of John Michael Higgins and Cheryl Hines wasted as the shallow talk show co-hosts. The ending is predictable and poorly matted on a hot-air balloon, and the denouement brings an unnecessarily cynical exclamation point to the whole venture. The 2009 DVD is unsurprisingly, mostly filler - a gag reel, a set of alternative endings, and a couple of featurettes - the first about the differences in the male and female points of view and the second about the apparent hilarity in making this film. I'm glad the cast and crew had a good time, me not so much.

4/5 A familiar feel, and some interesting use of BD-Live
  by terpfan1980 (Somewhere near Washington DC, United States)
While this film is more crude than those that followed a similar formula, I suppose that at the time that When Harry Met Sally was out and a certain 'I'll Have What She's Having' scene was shown many people felt that film was fairly crude. The Ugly Truth certainly includes some crude materials, though I think it was long ago out-cruded by My Best Friend's Girl [Blu-ray], American Pie - Unrated (Widescreen Collector's Edition) or Good Luck Chuck (Unrated) [Blu-ray]. Yeah, yeah, { without giving spoilers here directly } there is some material that some might be easily offended with, and the language is definitely crude, but if you're watching this film you probably know to expect that material already. If not, then perhaps you should learn about a film before watching it, rather than simply jumping into viewing (perhaps because you figured that the stars wouldn't be in something that you find offensive). Given Katherine Heigl's run of films, a resume which includes Knocked Up [Blu-ray] as an example, it probably would be good to NOT assume a sweet girl role for Heigl in everything she plays in.

I mention above When Harry Met Sally... (Collector's Edition), but that's a bit old at this point. Perhaps a newer film that shares a similar DNA would be say He's Just Not That Into You [Blu-ray], but there are plenty of others that follow the same basic formula, and if you really think about it, the formula here goes back (with some variations) through the ages all the way to Cyrano de Bergerac. Character needs help from someone else who understands the type of person that character is looking for.

Heigl brings charm to her character and flashes her smile and teeth even as she turns off her brain and takes the advice offered by Butler's character. As she does, she is able to win the attention of a neighbor that seems to fit the profile (in her mind) of a perfect mate. Will she wind up with that neighbor? To find that out, you'll have to watch the film.

Sony makes use of an interesting feature with this disc, at least on the Blu-ray release, via BD-Live. If your Blu-ray player is connected to the internet and supports BD-Live you can enable the MovieIQ function that is included with the disc. Once enabled you get the equivalent of pop-up trivia that can be accessed by pressing the Enter button on your player's remote control. It's an interesting use of BD-Live and to this point in the history of Blu-ray disc technology this might be the first really interesting feature that might appeal to more than a handful of users. On the other hand most people simply want to watch the movie and not be bothered with a bunch of trivia and background information so they may never engage the feature at all. Those that do are greeted with a simple pop-up interface that is easy to navigate, but sadly one that tends to obliterate too much of the screen and also seems to show too little information on the first screen that pops up (you have to scroll around a bit, click on a 'more' type button to see the rest of the information, etc., and that becomes less useful than one might hope for). A more translucent area for the pop-ups would be nice, though I suppose that with a variety of possible backgrounds that is difficult. Alternatively, and perhaps more wisely, I'd suggest using the space that is otherwise occupied above or below the feature film. The 'bug' or icon that shows that there's information available actually does show up in the bar above the film, but nothing else uses that space while the film is running, so that seems the perfect place to squeeze the MovieIQ information into.

Picture quality and audio quality are quite good, though with a film this recent one would expect no less.

This disc borders on a buy it recommendation from me. Certainly worth a viewing, but be aware of the crude and lewd material going in.

5/5 A little crude, but worth every min!
  by bigscreen (New Mexico)
This is a film you and your wife/GF/husband/BF and share and laugh together with. It is not a chick flick, but it is definitely about relationships from both sexes point of view. Funny as they get, and great acting. I wanted something with KH in it other than 27 dresses and Love Comes Softly. She is superb and GB is right on the money. Couldn't have been cast any better. Although the script was written by women, they know what they are talking about!

My wife and I highly recommend it! Five stars!