There’s a continuum of loving a genre or category of a thing, I think. On one end, you can love a thing in an “even a shitty version of this scratches the itch I need it to scratch” way, the way I am with legal thrillers (and flan). On the other end, you can love it in an “only the best will do, and I know the best when I see it” type way. This is how I feel about romantic comedies. I have liked all types of rom-coms, and know the genre well enough to have written a whole guide to them. But I’m very sensitive to all the ways a rom-com can stumble. The comedy may not land. The romance may not soar. One of the leads may look completely lost.1 It’s a precarious balancing act, and it takes a mix of finesse, precision, and zsa zsa zou to make a really good, or even great, rom-com.

The Ugly Truth did not nail that mix. It had no finesse and no precision and definitely no zsa zsa zsu. Instead, everyone involved came together to create something so loathsome that I’ve never been able to make it all the way through.

Katherine Heigl, in her Queen of the Box Office era, plays Abby, a Type A morning show producer who believes that love can be stage managed. She comes across a late night Man Show type show hosted by Mike, played by Gerard Butler in his Trying To Find A Non-Action Genre That Could Utilize Him Well era. Mike is a proud chauvinist who says that women should talk less and give blow jobs more. (I’m not exaggerating! Like, at all!) She is disgusted by this man’s whole deal, but as luck would have it, her network has hired Mike to boost her morning show ratings. The two butt heads until they somehow decide that Mike will prove to Abby that his meninist worldview is the right one, by coaching her into catching a man. (The man in question is a Ken doll that was cursed to be a human, played by one of the alien twins from Days of Our Lives, IYKYK.) But wouldn’t you know it? These enemies start becoming…friends?…and…maybe…more?!?

Robert Luketic directed this movie, which is notable because this man’s first. feature film was Legally Blonde! Imagine your first movie being a smash hit and an instant classic. Where could you possibly go from there?

Well, straight to hell, apparently. I liked his next movie, Win A Date With Tad Hamilton!, just fine. (It’s not the movie’s fault that it came out back when Ginnifer Goodwin was still playing the chubby2 best friend and Kathryn Hahn was still quietly crushing every weirdo role Hollywood gave her because they hadn’t figured out yet that she was a goddamn star.) But then it was a hard left turn into one of the worst of J.Lo’s Wedding Movie Industrial Complex, and he hasn’t recovered—quality-wise, anyway—since then.

But let me make sure to give Katherine Heigl her credit too, because she executive produced this one.

In 2009, Heigl really couldn’t have been any bigger. She was a lead character on the juggernaut nighttime soap Grey’s Anatomy, and she had two massive rom-com hits—Knocked Up and 27 Dresses—under her belt. She had also developed a reputation for being unusually frank about the industry, in a way that started losing her some powerful friends. In 2008, she announced that she would not be submitting her Grey’s Anatomy performance for Emmy consideration, because she felt the writing hadn’t been up to snuff that season.3 That same year, she sat down for an interview with Vanity Fair in which she called the female characters in Knocked Up “a little sexist.”4 To me, this was such a generous read, but Seth Rogen nevertheless took it very personally. And unfortunately, most of her roles after Knocked Up really undermined her position.

I’d feel worse for her if she weren’t executive producing the worst of it, including The Ugly Truth. Some of her career struggles post-Grey’s were disproportionate punishment for being a “difficult” woman, but some of them were clearly self-made.

I’m bringing all three of the writers to the Red Table for this one. One of them, Nicole Eastman, only has this movie on her resume. But the screenwriting duo Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith wrote Legally Blonde and 10 Things I Hate About You, two movies I love; as well as Ella Enchanted, The House Bunny, and She’s the Man, three movies that other people love! So I’m really curious about how they lost their signature frothy feminist energy and turned in something that so nakedly hates women even more than it hates men. Is Nicole Eastman that dark a presence that she got them to think all of this sexual harassment and denigration is funny?

It’s at this point, when Mike cups Abby’s breasts and says that she needs a bra that will “make her breasts sit up and say hello,” that I tend to black out from rage. If I get any further, it’s less than a minute later, when he says that she has the “raw materials” to fill out some jeans nicely, and then slaps her ass when she asks, “did you just say I have a nice ass?” I CANNOT TAKE THIS.

No. Everyone is guilty. Everyone involved. Because I love an enemies-to-lovers rom-com. Katharine Hepburn made an entire career out of enemies-to-lovers rom-coms. It’s not like the premise is inherently faulty, and I didn’t come in with a heart hardened against the trope. But the execution, which gives Mike all of the cultural and interpersonal power, and gives Abby nothing but humiliation as punishment for being naive and uptight, is horrendous. At least with something like How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days5, the central couple is equally yoked. They both hate women, and they are both deceitful, and they both fall in love with each other over a family game of Bullshit.

But here, the movie gleefully torments Abby, and her ultimate reward is to date this man who, like the movie, clearly hates her even more than he hates himself.

The 2000s were not our best decade as a society. Cynicism and bitterness dominated the cultural and political vibes. There’s a reason Obama’s Hope messaging electrified so many of us: we were starving for hope and sincerity. The Ugly Truth came out at the beginning of the Obama era, so it was still steeped in Bush era sensibilities. I mentioned The Man Show earlier; that went off the air in 2004, but the rancid vibes lingered. A society that giggles at a show that opens with their “Juggy Dance Squad” and closes with footage of women bouncing on trampolines doesn’t let go of its misogyny easily. And now, 17 years later, we’re living in an even worse iteration of it. Because at least in 2009, I still had some reproductive rights.

That’s what makes The Ugly Truth even harder to watch now than it was the first time I tried (a dozen years ago). Gerard Butler’s abundant charisma6 couldn’t mask the danger of his character’s worldview, or the danger of platforming it. Honestly, having someone as charismatic as Butler playing this role does a lot of evil work in legitimizing hateful incel culture. The Man Show is long gone, but an entire army of podcasters and professional trolls took its place. They have control of all branches of government now. It’s always been physically impossible for me to find any of this movie’s shenanigans charming, and it causes me legitimate pain now.

I fucking didn’t. I have tapped out every time. I’ve watched enough scenes on YouTube to know that I can’t go any further with it.

But maybe I’m wild. Y’all can watch this scene where Abby loses the controller of her vibrating panties and has a full orgasm in front of her coworkers, boss, and boyfriend in a restaurant and decide for yourselves!

It’s very warmly lit. I like when rom-coms are warmly lit.

I don’t just regret watching it. I regret that it was made. I regret that it was ever a concept. I regret every step that brought it into existence.

On the next Terrible Tuesday: Eli Roth’s biggest failure, in my opinion.

Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this essay, please take a second to feel Al Gore’s rhythm by liking and sharing it.