Then again, what do you expect when your male lead's recent roles included 300 and Law Abiding Citizen, the one elegantly thuggish but homoerotic to an astoundingly unself-aware degree (um, I think …), the other merely thuggish, ugly and pointless. Gerard Butler seems to have a lot to do with this, having co-starred with Heigl in what was roundly judged to have been one of the worst movies of 2009, and easily the least romantic romantic comedy, The Ugly Truth (true or no, it was certainly hard to gaze upon). I realise it's high time we refreshed the tired tics and tropes of the kissy-kissy no-boys-allowed modern women's picture, I just didn't think the solution would be to take the suppressed homoeroticism of the punchy-punchy male buddy flick then slather it over the vaguely virginal values associated with most Sandra Bullock and Amanda Bynes movies. This week's offering is The Bounty Hunter, a fairly trite reworking of elements of 48 Hrs and Midnight Run, with the twist being that this time the bounty isn't some incarcerated lowlife or crooked mob accountant, but the obnoxious ex-wife (Aniston) of the equally obnoxious bounty hunter (Butler). These days every other romantic comedy feels like an action movie, especially the new breed of roughhousing romcom that seems to be exclusively populated by Gerard Butler, Katherine Heigl and the many manifestations of Jennifer Aniston. S omething terrible is happening to the modern romantic comedy, hitherto a blameless and chaste movie fixture for housewives waiting for the rush hour to die down, 'tween girls waiting for their princes to show up, and sentimental straight guys like me who want to let their inner confused-teenage-girl out for walkies once in a while.
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