It does, of course, make perfect economic sense to place Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston centre stage. If you listen closely, you can still hear the sound of cash-grabbing Hollywood fat cats lining their pockets with undeserved riches.

After all, who wouldn’t want to watch Mr Abs and Mrs Haircut ham it up in an outrageous action comedy? Well, not me. Had I been juggling handgrenades at the time of viewing, my person would now be a piece of modern art splattered all over the living room wall.

The Bounty Hunter: Pull the Pin

So what’s The Bounty Hunter all about? The plot, if you can call it that, may well have been written on the back of a cigarette pack. Gerard Butler plays Milo Boyd, a bounty hunter who stumbles on his dream job – the chance to track down his bail-hopping ex-wife, Nicole Hurly (Jennifer Aniston).

While the movie rides the coattails of comedic gems such as Midnight Run, the complete absence of laughs mean The Bounty Hunter is about as funny as a hammer to the head. Actually, a hammer to the head would be funnier.

Gerard Butler: The Ugly Truth

Gerard Butler struts his stuff in The Bounty Hunter with the grace of an elephant on a trampoline. His performance here may be light-years ahead of that in The Ugly Truth, but this guy gets deeper under my skin than a Chilean coal miner.

Butler exudes the charisma of a fossil, his delivery imbued with the lifelessness of a goldfish on a bus. Curiosity, however, recently got the better of me when I joined a Butler fan forum in search of enlightenment as to his appeal.

You know that moment when you walk into a village pub: the music stops, silence ensues, punters’ heads rotate Exorcist-style towards your person? Sure you do. Well that’s the icy response this wandering stranger encountered from fans of ‘Gerry’. I wasn’t welcome. So it was that I fought with the bravery of a Catholic priest to exorcise the truth from those who pray to the Shrine of Butler.

The general consensus seems to be this: Gerry has the ‘x-factor’, ‘he’s butch’, ‘sexy’ and, wait for it: ‘there’s just something about him that you can’t put your finger on’.

Well let me try. Butler has the touch of a black hole: he sucks the life out of every movie he’s in. Like taxes, the common cold and Simon Cowell, he just refuses to go away.

And why do producers keep insisting Gerry drops his Scottish accent in favour of an America twang? I’m yet to see a film in which he doesn’t sound like Dolly Parton stuck in a microwave.

Despite all my misgivings, I have a sneaking suspicion Butler may pull a decent performance from the hat at some point, but for now, he needs to fire his agent and commit to a script outside his comfort zone.

I’d like to see him play a cross-dressing, zoo keeper, who stops at nothing to save the world from a shortage of cornflakes. Instant classic!

The Bounty Hunter: 150 Minutes Later

As a romantic comedy, The Bounty Hunter has all the sizzle of a vegetarian sausage – it looks promising, but lacks substance.

It’s a pointless movie that would have been better left on the shelf along with an out-of-date jar of pickles and Eddie Murphy’s acting career.

Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars

This realisation hit me harder than a freight train the other night when I watched The Ugly Truth. I’ll tell you right from the get go, it’s one of the worst movies I’ve seen this side of the English Civil War.

The film is offensive to men, women and small children alike – in fact, anybody with a pulse. Straight after the movie ended, some random fellow from the North Pole dropped me a line. “Hey there”, he said, “have you seen that movie The Ugly Truth? It’s bloody awful”. The phone line went dead.

And, let me tell you, if there is life out there, right now they are planning a full frontal attack on Earth after being infuriated by this idiotic film. It’s a depressing thought. On the plus side, though, at least that would mean no more Gerard Butler movies.

The Ugly Truth: arrrrggggggggggg!

The Ugly Truth orbits the Planet of Romantic Film Predictability more shamelessly than a junk food addict in a sweet shop.

It’s not the movie’s reliance on convention which ruffled my feathers, rather the chauvinistic, anti-feminist vibe reverberating throughout.

Horribly devious characters populate a film which fails miserably in its attempts to pass itself off as a rom-com. The Ugly Truth is like feeding a pig bacon: it’s just wrong!

The Story of The Ugly Truth

If you are going to make a movie about vacuous people, who better to cast in the leading role than Gerard Butler? It’s a stroke of genius really. He’s clearly not the sharpest barb on the wire, so thumbs up to the casting director.

Katherine, Knocked Up, Heigl, also takes centre stage, playing a TV show producer coached in the art of romance by her chauvinistic correspondent, Butler.

Heigl’s character has everything she could want in life – success, fame, money and good looks to boot. The only thing she’s missing is a man. Cue the rugged, foul-mouthed, woman-hating Butler.

The Ugly Truth: Get Me The Shotgun Ma

The Ugly Truth is so bad that I just can’t be bothered to talk about it anymore. All I would say is this: I have little doubt that the DVD is radioactive.

Given that I’m a 21^st century guy, safety always come first. As such, I’ve devised a plan. Firstly, rent a small fishing vessel and sail into the middle of the ocean. Secondly, place the disc into a casket, nailing the lid shut so it may never see the light of day again. Finally, throw the casket overboard, watching with glee as it descends to the bottom of the ocean.

Like Freddy Krueger, Jason and any other force of filmic evil, though, I suspect Butler will be back when I least expect it.

The ugly truth about the The Ugly Truth goes something like this: arrrggggggggg!

Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars

The movie is aptly titled given that things are never quite what they seem. And like the two central characters – played with aplomb by Clive Owen and Julia Roberts – the audience is constantly kept on its feet in a world of double-crosses.

As good as Clayton? Nah. Better than Transformers 2? Does the Pope like biscuits?

Everybody does…

In a nutshell Gilroy shifts the action from the seedy legal underbelly of Michael Clayton to the slimy world of corporate espionage.

But unlike the ruthless depiction of America’s legal elite in Clayton, Gilroy adopts a more playful approach with Duplicity.

Sure, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture of corporate America, but Duplicity throws out more one-liners than a cracked-up Scrabble player.

Roberts and Owen revel in their roles as corporate operatives who join forces to pull off the biggest heist of their careers. Tension ensues as the ultimate game of cat-and-mouse descends into one double cross after another.

And the slick dialogue – which at times resembles verbal tennis – meshes well with a plot full of twists and turns.

Looks and brains…?

Duplicity opens with a gloriously unusual slow motion fight between corporate tycoons Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson. Stylistically it bears no resemblence to the slick cinematography that follows. But as a set piece I found this daringly unusual intro genuinely funny.

The 24-esque split screen interludes were less appealing but nonetheless served to underscore the movie’s spy-like credentials.

At a running time of 125 minutes, Duplicity loses some of its sizzle in the third act as the intricate plot unravels, but the anticlimactic pay-off is worth it. At least, I thought so.

I’m a big fan of film noir and would cite classics such as The Big Sleep and Chinatown among my all time favourites.

And while Duplicity fails to reach the creative heights of such masterpieces, it oozes dialogue capable of rivalling landmark films.

Sleek, sexy, and smart…. and I’m not just talking about Julia Roberts.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars – available on Blu-ray and DVD