I don’t think the target audience for films like The Ugly Truth are adolescent boys, as the essayist says. They were at The Hangover. I had a friend insist I go to see The Ugly Truth with her, and she paid for my ticket. I spent the entire time letting her know what was coming up next in the plot. She told me to hush, that all she wanted was to see Gerard Butler, and hopefully without a shirt on.
I assume all those young career women in the audience were there for the same reason. No one was paying much attention to Katherine Heigl at the screening I attended, except maybe to imagine themselves in her place, kissing Gerard Butler. What’s funny is that the last time Heigl did a role like this one, she complained to anyone who’d listen. So why is she doing it again? Oh yeah. She got a busload of money.
I think the target audience are mainly young women and the “shrill career woman” is written that way becuase it’s an easy trope. It’s rare that a mainstream film is groundbreaking. The point is to make money and if it can be done by the numbers, going down the same road that’s been trod for 30+ years that’s proven to make money, then that’s what’s going to happen, real life be damned. What that says about the audience that these movies do make money is another story.