Is 'The Ugly Truth' misogynistic?

How the new romantic comedy treats women

Robert Luketic's new romantic comedy The Ugly Truth is "sexist and misogynistic," said Melissa Silverstein in The Huffington Post. Starring Katherine Heigl as a "good at work but bad at life" TV producer, and Gerard Butler as a sexist cable-access show host who becomes involved with her, the movie is "riddled with clichés about competent women and how they are all control freaks, have cats, wear ponytails, wear comfortable clothes, don't masturbate, etc." (watch the trailer for The Ugly Truth).

"For a movie aimed primarily at a female audience," said Rene Rodriguez in The Miami Herald, "The Ugly Truth seems strangely intent on setting the women's movement back three or four decades." It's also strange that this movie was written by three women, and that Heigl "served as co-executive producer—with her mother!" And this is the same Katherine Heigl who "had the temerity to decry Knocked Up as sexist shortly after its release. Is this her idea of a corrective?"

Look, The Ugly Truth may be a "drearily formulaic romantic comedy" in which "the guy and the girl who hate each other" at first wind up together, said Christy Lemire in The Canadian Press, but it's little more than that. The film's "graphically sexual and profane dialogue" is merely "a transparent and desperate attempt at being edgy," but it's neither offensive nor amusing.