Capsule reviews of films playing the week of Aug. 12 

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THE UGLY TRUTH Look, it's only fair. If impressionable frat boys can enjoy The Hangover this summer and impressionable teenagers can enjoy Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, then why not give impressionable women their own imbecillic film? An abhorrent romantic comedy, The Ugly Truth is so inept and ill-conceived on so many levels that mandatory sterilization seems to be the only punishment suitable for everyone involved in this mess. We wouldn't want these folks breeding like rabbits. In a typically bad performance consisting primarily of exaggerated reaction shots, Katherine Heigl (also serving as executive producer) plays Abby, a TV news producer who's also a frigid control freak loved only by her cat. Into her world enters Mike (Gerard Butler), a chauvinist whose cable access show (The Ugly Truth) gets absorbed into Abby's news program in an effort to boost ratings. Mike's segment, in which he claims that men can't be taught anything once they pass toilet training and that there's no such thing as a romantic male, offends Abby, but eventually she finds herself turning to Mike for help on how to land her hottie neighbor, Colin (Eric Winter). He's only too happy to assist her, until he begins to fall for this pill himself. It's inconceivable that a movie with such an unsympathetic female lead was written by three women. The male characters don't come off much better, but they do come off better. While Abby is painted as a repugnant caricature to her very core, Mike is revealed to only be a misogynist when the script calls for it; the rest of the time, he's nursing a broken heart caused by past relationships or lovingly hanging out with his sister and his nephew. Ignore this in favor of (500) Days of Summer, a romantic comedy that's as smart, perceptive and charming as this one is stupid, clueless and, well, ugly. *

UP Pixar's Up proves to be merely one more winner for an outfit that refuses to compromise its high level of quality, to say nothing of its artistic integrity. It tells the story of Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), a 78-year-old balloon salesman who, after the passing of his beloved wife, decides to hook his house to thousands of helium-filled balloons and drift off to an uninhabited part of South America. The launch goes smoothly enough, until he discovers that he has an unwanted passenger in the form of 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer member Russell (Jordan Nagai), whose boundless energy wears out the curmudgeonly Carl. Nevertheless, the senior citizen pushes upward and onward, only to encounter a plethora of unexpected developments once they reach their destination. In addition to providing the requisite thrills (those afraid of heights will tense up during the exhilarating climax), Up is as emotionally involving as we've come to expect from our Pixar pics, with themes of longing, loneliness and self-sacrifice coursing through its running time. In fact, its PG rating alone hints that this is one of those toon tales that will resonate more powerfully with adults than with kids, and never more so than in the early sequences between Carl and his wife Ellie (did we really just witness a miscarriage in an animated film?). Of course, this wouldn't be a family film without some colorful sidekicks to provide added entertainment value, and the picture provides one keeper in Dug, a happy-go-lucky dog who, along with several other (fiercer) canines, has been equipped with a device that allows him to speak (he's voiced by co-director Bob Peterson). Thus, here's a movie that ultimately goes to the dogs – literally – and it still deserves enthusiastic thumbs up. ***1/2

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE Hardly a lazy sequel, X-Men Origins: Wolverine contains a couple of nifty narrative surprises as well as some memorable tensions between its mutant players. Overall, though, it's hard to view this as an integral entry in the X-Men franchise. That's not to say it's as irrelevant as, say, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, but part of Wolverine's appeal has always been his aura of mystery, and an origin piece only works to strip him of that secrecy. Besides, the movie's occasional clumsiness in laying out the expository groundwork ends up batting against its own intentions, which makes the picture seem even more trifling. Having said that, it's apparent that this isn't the disaster many speculated it would be, especially on the heels of bad Internet buzz and that infamous download that left FOX executives outfoxed. As expected, the picture's chief selling point is Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine, even if the storyline largely harnesses his considerable talents: He's an excellent brooder, but brooding's about all that the film requires him to do. As Victor Creed (later Sabretooth), Liev Schreiber is believable as both Logan's brother and his tormentor, while Danny Huston, as Stryker, proves to be as fascistic a villain as Brian Cox when he tackled the role in X2. Ryan Reynolds adds some necessary sparkle as the wisecracking Deadpool, and I just wish he had been handed the more sizable role of Gambit instead (as the latter, mediocre Taylor Kitsch lives up to his surname). Other actors express what's required of them – it's often rage or regret, although mostly it's just frozen stares at the blue-screen areas where the special effects were inserted at a later time. **1/2