Cruel Summer

As the big summer movie season draws ever closer, I was looking through a list of the big studio releases and was wondering, "I wonder which of these will be the most absolutely rock stupid movie of the season, a movie that causes you to question the sanity of anyone who was involved in it generally and the studio morons who thought it would be a good idea to spend tens of millions of dollars of their company's money on it specifically."

There are always plenty of crapfests to choose from when looking at big budget studio releases. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen would be a likely candidate but it doesn't meet the sanity criterion. Of course this movie was made. No matter how stupid it is, it's a sequel to a stupid movie that made a huge chunk of money and this one will probably be a hit as well, especially if they have Megan Fox bending over two or three cars this time around. G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra also falls into this category. Sure, Eiffel Tower crashing aside, it looks to be about as entertaining as a documentary about how cheese is made but the built-in G.I. Joe fanbase means that you can at least justify its existence. No, I predict the worst movie of the summer will be this:



And this brings us to another edition of Movies I Haven't Seen. The Ugly Truth not only meets the sanity criterion, it far and away exceeds it. Judging from the trailer, it's an ugly mishmash of The Producers, Cyrano and every romantic comedy you've ever seen. Because none of that was deemed offensive enough, they've also made "Wimmin Be Stoopid" one of the movie's central themes.

Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl are two of Hollywood's big up-and-comers who have apparently decided that they want their movie careers to end here and now. Heigl almost did it with her last movie 27 Dresses but thought, "No, I can do way worse," so chose to do this as well.

Heigl's character, Abby Richter is a career woman who, of course, needs a man to complete her. She figures the best way to accomplish this is to be especially annoying and creepy on first dates so she not only does extensive research on potential suitors but takes it along so they can discuss it at the dinner table. She doesn't have time to be puzzled as to why this method has yet to produce a man willing to buy her a house because her job as a television producer brings her into contact with Butler's character, Mike Chadway. Mike is what Howard Stern would be if you took away Stern's humor and style and just said blatantly sexist asshole remarks over and over again. Abby makes it clear that, as his producer, she will do everything she can to make sure he fails and gets fired or canceled or whatever. Note to all you wannabe TV producers out there: this is pretty much the exact opposite of what you're supposed to do in that job. Naturally, Abby fails and Mike becomes a big hit.

In the meantime, Abby meets a man who somehow passed her elaborate vetting process without discovering that she's a big bag of crazy. Mike tells her that she can get this guy for her and that he will quit if he fails which shows that Mike is a fucking idiot willing to gamble his future away but that's hardly the most stupid thing this movie has to offer. No, the most stupid thing would be that Abby, a woman in her late 20s, has gotten to this point in her life without realizing that men like sex and that she may have an easier time of catching one if she put some of her ample sex appeal to work. Luckily she now has a misogynistic jerk to show her the way. She even has to be taught that man may actually like it when she rubs up against him, something most girls learn when they're 13 and they slow dance with a boy for the first time.

We also find out something that anyone with two functioning neurons could have figured out when the trailer began. Turns out Mike and Abby are actually attracted to each other. This is where the movie turns into a confirmation of the worldview of the Nice Guys. You all know who the Nice Guys are, right? Those are the ones who say on message boards, "Why don't women like Nice Guys?" and then proceed to tell you the story of some girl who dumped them for total jerks. These one-sided accounts are always presented as evidence that the female of the human species is completely insane for rejecting these poor, put-upon Nice Guys. Nice Guys will love this movie. Abby is going to reject the Nice Doctor for the man who advises women to stop being lazy fatasses.

There is no chance that The Ugly Truth will be anything resembling good. Not only is it offensive and stupid but, if the trailer is anything to go by, it is the event horizon of a giant comedic black hole. Not only can humor not escape from it but the audience will feel as if time itself has slowed down until the merciful moment when the credits start rolling. It's saying a lot that I'd much rather skip The Ugly Truth in favor of another movie coming out the same week called G Force. Here's how ComingSoon.net describes the movie:

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer brings his first 3-D film to the big screen with "G-Force," a comedy adventure about the latest evolution of a covert government program to train animals to work in espionage. Armed with the latest high-tech spy equipment, these highly trained guinea pigs discover that the fate of the world is in their paws.

Yes, I'll be there and I'll have a huge smile on my face because I know that, no matter how many jokes we get about someone eating what looks like a Raisinet without realizing it's guinea pig poop, I'll know that it's quality is light years ahead of the sheer hell being presented somewhere else in the multiplex.