by Monica Davies

Created on: July 25, 2009   Last Updated: July 26, 2009

It's good to see Katherine Heigl having some fun on screen. Finally. Sure, she had 'fun' in 27 Dresses as she posed in a myriad different (hideous) costumes and practiced her fake swooning techniques. (Note that Grey's Anatomy doesn't count here because nothing in that show ever looks fun...) But in The Ugly Truth, she swears, stresses, over-reacts, worries about sex, tries to cover her insecurities and over-analyses every guy in her life, just like regular people, and manages to enjoy it. And watching her make her way through this adult wasteland makes us hope she'll never leave R-Rated comedy land.

Of course, Gerard Butler starring alongside Heigl is another reason why we wish films like this would appear every day. Even though some douche bag behind the scenes made the terrible decision to make him lose his hot, Scotch accent for the movie, he still oozes suave charm in every scene. He's not so smooth at portraying vulnerability, but who really cares about that stuff anyway?

Heigl plays Abby Richter, a producer of a TV news programme in Sacramento, California. She is incredibly irked when her boss hires Butler's pompous Mike Chadway to the morning show to boost poor ratings, without asking her. Chadway's daily segment is about everything women are doing wrong in relationships and everything men want and is called, you guessed it, The Ugly Truth. When Mike finds out Abby is trying to win over the supposed man of her dreams, he offers to coach and teach her in the right ways to get a man. You can pretty much fill in the montage scenes, sexual tension and cliched ending yourself from this point on, but in spite of what you know is coming, the movie still remains worth watching.

It's miles ahead of other romantic comedies like The Proposal or the aforementioned 27 Dresses because it's blunt, straightforward and laugh-out-loud funny. There are no over-the-top, aw-he's-too-lovely, schmultzy moments. As Mike Chadway would have us believe, it really is all about the lust here, and it's a better movie than we've ever seen Heigl make. Hopefully this means she's on the up-and-up career-wise.

There are many other things of substance that you could rather spend your money on, but this is a rare rom-com that won't leave girls everywhere looking over the horizon for Prince Charming, but rather smirking at him from across the room. It's a laugh to watch!

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