Masochism Month Part 2: Romantic Comedies

Hello and welcome to the second part of my month long experiment of self mutilation, where I’m finding I have to keep sharp objects even farther away from my reach. This week I’m going to look at yet another part of that wholly abysmal genre, chick flicks. Though I’m cutting myself a break, sort of, with comedies. I love comedy in all its shapes and forms, so then this shouldn’t bug me that much. Right? ... Right?
Well, for the most part, yeah, it really doesn’t. Last week when I talked about “Dear John” I had a bit of a realization why I don’t really care for mushy chick flicks. A movie that has a love story as the ONLY real drama in it is very rarely all that interesting. Most of the time I just feel they are like filmed versions of being there while some other people are being all couple-y in front you. It’s just incredibly awkward and a bit annoying. This isn’t to say love stories just suck because they are love stories, but more they really don’t seem to like to work on their own very much. This is why I have a little bit of a soft spot for Romantic Comedies or RomComs as they are sometimes known. Most of the time in these movies, the love story kind of takes a back seat to the rest of what’s going on and evolves a little more interestingly, i.e. not boring and vague. Don’t get me wrong, watch too many all at once and I become extremely cynical again, this going back to the fact that they are very formulaic like the straight up love story. But if there is ever a way to get me to watch a chick flick, throwing in jokes is a good start.
That’s not to say they can’t still be eye gouging-ly awful. Speaking of which, let’s talk about “The Ugly Truth”. This movie is just stupid. I mean, comedies don’t ALWAYS have to be clever, stupid is fine, but that means it should still be funny, at least a little. “The Ugly Truth” is about the producer of a morning news program, Katherine Heigl of “Knocked up”/”Grey’s Anatomy” fame, who is you’re typical uptight/clumsy/OCD/spinsterish female character that just can’t find the right man for some reason. Oh wait, she has a list of things she needs a man to do/have, and she refuses to be with any guy that doesn't fit this list exactly to the letter for it is perfect and infallible! (…huh?) One day, she’s told that she has to put a new guy, Gerard “that oaf from ‘Gamer’” Butler, on the show. Butler is one of the most offensively sexist guys ever and Heigl doesn’t like him. (I’m somehow not shocked.) Of course you can see where this is going, through working together the two start to fall for one another and change that locked form of life they both have and it’s all so standard.
Ok, the performances here are by far MUCH better than last week. Everyone actually doesn’t seem like a High School drama club reject here, hell, Gerard Butler is audible without screaming in this movie! Heigl more or less plays the exact same character that she played in “Knocked Up” though, while there’s nothing wrong with that, it does seem to kind of give off that one note performance thing that most actors try to avoid. Most of the supporting cast is there to move the plot along, but the actors all take the parts and run with them, and I’d like to spot light the husband and wife anchor team, they have some nice comedic chemistry, even if what was scripted for them isn't all that funny. In fact, no one really is. Why is that? The script of course!
I must say it again. This movie just isn’t funny, at all. What’s the biggest problem? Butler’s character is an asshole. Not the charming Han Solo type, I mean to say the way he acts and talks is something that would probably get his nuts chopped off by the first woman he tried to talk to. Many other reviewers have called him sexist and misogynistic, and they are right, half the time. The other half, he’s supposed to be some tender, soft kind of person that’s been fucked over in the past and is embittered by it… And that really creates a problem, if he's that much of a fucking jerk, he basically has to end up secretly fighting crime and curing cancer in his down time before I'll actually consider him as an ok guy. How does finding out women have fucked him over and that he helps his sister take care of her son allow him to get away with calling women dogs, saying they can’t get men because they’re fat, or saying the way to a man’s heart is a blow job? In my book, it doesn’t. I’m sorry but the large amount of offensive shit that comes out of this prick’s mouth is just way too much to ever be likable. What’s the odd thing about this? He’s supposed to be the one that is sympathized with. That just boggles my mind, but then again, Heigel’s character is border lined psychotic if you ask me. She does back ground checks a guy she’s going on a date with… I mean, I can understand wanting to see if a guy’s a convicted rapist or something, but don’t think telling him you did it while you're in the middle of the first date is a smart move. And really, that list for that perfect guy of her’s, it’s just one of those ridiculous things that exists to give her her single character trait. Seriously, it’s all she gets, being uptight and crazy obsessive, it’s weird.
That and the set ups are usually one of two things: Stupid, like the whole back ground check thing, and right out of the gutter, what the movie defaults too. Example: Heigl saying ‘cock’ a bunch of times simply because “men don’t own the word.”

WARNING! CONTROVERSIAL COMEDY GEEK OUT APPROACHING!

Straight up sex jokes, aren’t funny. No, they aren’t, shut up. If they have some kind of silly context that isn't just pointing and saying “boobies!” then, yes, hilarious. But these days, it’s all about having tits on screen while people are acting silly or people just fucking each other while saying silly shit. That is stupid, AKA low brow to the point that the primordial ooze wouldn’t even laugh. In fairness though, this movie does actually have an example of a GOOD set up, Heigl’s character accidentally wearing vibrating panties to a business dinner and losing the remote in the restaurant. The idea there, I admit is pretty funny to think about. The execution is kind of meh, but it’s at least one decent effort. However, what happens when it tries things like just saying dirty words, naming parts of the human body, or miming sex acts? They either fail from the get go or get really old faster than that guy from the end of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.
All in all, I’d like to make some pun about this movie being an ugly blight on the face of humanity, buuuuuut I can’t really say that here. Don’t get me wrong, this movie is dumb, but it’s at least a decently acted kind of dumb and it has one or two slight chuckles in it. It’s still got Gerard Butler being an unlikable douche the whole fucking movie, and it’s a formulaic movie that doesn’t do anything new. It’s extremely forgettable and I don’t recommend it, there are far better RomComs out there. But I’ve certainly seen worse chick flick comedies, like “Bride Wars”.

SURPRISE! BONUS MINI-REVIEW!

I’m only going to talk briefly on this one because thinking back on this movie honestly hurts, a lot, but I figured I had justification for putting it at the end here for 2 reasons. One, it’s another comedy considered to be a chick flick and two, it’s one of the most god awful things I’ve ever sat through and I feel that time should at least amount to something. I’m just floored by this movie, I mean, who was the audience supposed to be? This little romp about two best friends that suddenly decide to hate each other’s guts because an administrative error has caused their weddings to both occur on the same day, is the most retarded movie I have ever seen. Yes, I know that term is not PC or anything but god! Nothing in this movie funny, charming, redeemable, or any other words that can normally be associated with good. It’s just two women acting like utter children and I guess we’re supposed to be thinking it’s funny, which it isn’t, at all. In fact, it really feels like this movie is down right cold hearted. The two main characters are more obsessed with the wedding on the same day thing than they are about the guys they are actually marrying, and I find that kind of counter productive. I know the common joke is that weddings are for the bride and all that, but really? You’re just going to have a total mental breakdown and make it your life’s obsession to spoil you’re BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING just because it’s on the same day as yours? What the fuck sense does that make? I’m pretty sure that would drive BOTH grooms away faster than anything. Not to mention that the movie then turns into a tattered patch work of unfunny, completely ridiculous “comedy” set pieces. Actually, at a few points there are some suggestions for compromises to make things work, but really, these two are far too childish.
Since they are really the only characters in this movie, I’m only talking about Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway… But, I don’t know what to say here. I’m shocked that two actresses that have been nominated for Oscars can give such fucking bad performances. I mean, even if you’re just yukin’ it up or doing it for a pay check you have some effort. Here, I don’t know what the fuck happened. These women are just annoying and they have no real other character traits, at least none that are actually shown. All you ever see is that they’re both selfish and at one point they were both friends. And I’m really not lying when I say that all the other characters have absolutely no baring on the plot at all and are often just dropped or are so far in the back ground they may as well not be there.
The attempts at humor here are just… No, I can’t even call them attempts. The… scenes that I guess are supposed to be funny (?) are all just dropping designer names in here and there while Hathaway and Hudson scream at each other, for about 90 minutes. That’s all there is, just the two of them trying to fuck with each other over probably the most petty, selfish thing ever. Does all this really amount to anything? No. Are there any real laughs? NO. Is there even anything that makes this movie worth watching? NO! FUCKING NO! NOTHING! It’s dumb, redundant, and I can’t believe that not even ONE of the insane number of people that it takes to make a studio film spoke up to point out how fucking stupid this whole thing was. Jesus! I’m mainly keeping this short because this was one of the worst reviewed movies of last year (and I would say it’s one of the worst of all time) so I'm not really saying anything new here. People know it's bad, but I sure as hell didn't think it could possibly be THIS bad.