Who wants to date Katherine Heigl?

MANILA, Philippines - There are blue aliens and then there’s Katherine Heigl. In an industry that thrives on the suspension of disbelief, there might be none as incredulous as Katherine Heigl, romantic-comedy heroine.

There are blue aliens and gravity-defying karate kicks. There are mind-bending inceptions and movie stars who fall in love with bookstore clerks from Notting Hill. But Katherine Heigl, that blonde harpy with that crazed grin, romantic-comedy heroine? Well, that’s stretching it.

Heigl started out, like many America’s sweethearts in training, in various bit roles, playing everything from an alien stuck in Roswell, to a thong-wearing lolita in My Father the Hero, to, finally, an underwear-model-turned-surgeon in Grey’s Anatomy. She was competent, if cloying, support in these roles, providing the tears when needed and good cleavage when the ratings went down.

Katharine with an “A” — one letter spells the difference. Katharine Hepburn went toe to toe with the formidable Spencer Tracy in rom-com classics like Adam’s Rib and Woman of the Year.

But like most young blonde actresses with big smiles, she decided she wanted to become the new Julia Roberts. Suddenly, a different kind of Katherine Heigl surfaced — the uptight, really-needs-a-Valium bitch passing herself off as the modern woman. The Heigl archetype usually starts out as an undersexed, career-obsessed working girl focused on nailing the dream job and the dream husband. Eventually, the Heigl surrenders to the charms of a frat boy with a bong on his side and XTube on his laptop. Heigl has played this to great effect in rom-com hits like Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up (playing a career-obsessed, uptight harpy who finds herself pregnant), The Ugly Truth (a career-obsessed, uptight harpy who has to work with Leonidas), and now Life As We Know It (a career-obsessed, uptight harpy who suddenly finds herself with kids).

The battle of the sexes is a time-honored tradition in the romantic-comedy cannon, of course. After all, one of cinema’s great pairings, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, built their legacy on the taming of the shrew. But Hepburn and Tracy were equals, pound for pound. Their cinematic partnership brought both of them to different places, showed them the merits of the other’s way of living. When one pushed, the other pushed harder. At the end of their movies, they didn’t just budge and give way to the other. They came together, their merits intact, and found a way to make things work.

From Kate Hudson to Amy Adams, many have tried and failed at trying to become the new Julia Roberts. No one does hooker fairytales like the original, evidently.

In Katherine Heigl’s battles of the sexes, there is only compromise and settling — a woman with the whole world in the palm of her hand, settling for an immature loser who just happened to pull out something boldly romantic at the very last minute.

In these movies, being a working girl is looked down, almost, as if ambition and affection cannot possibly coexist. In the end, the Heigl archetype always relents in some way. In Mike Nichols’ Oscar-winning ’80s chick flick Working Girl, Melanie Griffith got the career, the guy, and the Carly Simon theme song. I mean, if you’re stretching reality, make it something to pine for, right? Why encourage settling?

In the end, I guess, the biggest problem with these movies is the fact that Heigl is a black hole of charm, whose shrew-ness is so pronounced, you wonder if delectable visions of her in a thong are really enough to tide her leading men over the histrionics and Heigl-ness of it all. Because really, who wants to date Katherine Heigl? More importantly, who wants to watch Katherine Heigl? Her movies are supposed to pander to the romance-hungry faction of the female population but in doing so, don’t do either sex any favors.

And when you get out of that movie house, see all the women around you — the single mom treating her kids to the latest CGI flick, the career woman meeting her equally-accomplished man for a date, the young girls on their first no-chaperone mallventure, you realize that these flesh and blood women have so much more to offer. You realize that the Heigl archetype, with its oversimplified perspective on gender negotiations, is irrelevant.