The Ugly Truth, staring Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl, isn’t exactly a cult favourite or anything. But the romantic comedy has one particular iconic scene we keep hearing about.
TLDR; Heigl’s character wears a pair of remote control vibrating knickers to a corporate dinner, loses control of the remote, and eventually reaches orgasm (we can assume?) in front of her co-workers.
The build up
In the scene beforehand, we see Abby at home having a glass of wine, getting ready for a date. She spots the vibrating underwear, a gift from her colleague, Mike (played by Gerard Butler), on the coffee table. She shrugs, drops the white panties she’s currently wearing, and slips on the pair of black, lacey, vibrating ones under her dinner dress.
At this point, the doorbell rings, clearly earlier than Abby was expecting. A little flustered by this, she drops the remote for the underwear into her handbag and opens the door. Instead of Colin (her date) she finds Mike and another colleague on her doorstep, ready to take her to an important corporate dinner she knew nothing about.
After some negotiation, she agrees to come, and they pick Colin up on the way. In the next couple of scenes, we see them arrive at a fancy restaurant, greeted by some other (somewhat sleazy) colleagues.
The vibrating knickers scene
It’s when they’re all sat at the dinner table that things start to go a little off-piste. When Abby kicks Mike under the table, the remote for her knickers falls out of her handbag. Which is then picked up by an inquisitive kid walking by. On returning to his own table, the kid proceeds to press and shake the remote, seemingly annoyed at it not doing anything…
In the meantime, Abby stops with a gasp mid-sentence, starts squirming in her seat, and starts rummaging frantically under the table looking for the remote control, whilst Mike mumbles an apology to the rest of the table.
Meanwhile, Abby’s date, Colin, who is sat next to her is clearly confused by the buzzing he can hear, and checks to see if it’s his phone (spoiler: it clearly isn’t).
At this point, unable to find the remote, Abby seems to start rolling with the vibrations in her pants, blaming her obvious pleasure on the “best ceviche I’ve ever tasted!”. Claiming that it’s so good, in fact, that she has to dash off and ask the chef for the recipe.
However, before she can make her escape, she’s asked to tell everyone about “the new teaser campaign we’re starting next week” (pun intended, I’m sure).
At this point, Abby is standing, and the vibrations are clearly giving her wobbly knees (we’ve all been there), and is struggling to string her words together.
Mike, by now, seems to be quite enjoying the situation, and after spotting the remote, proceeds with a grin to encourage Abby to continue telling everyone about the campaign.
Whilst Abby is becoming increasingly overwhelmed and tongue-tied, we’re given a close-up of the remote with its power levels of: Warm-up, Paradise, Rapture, and Ecstasy (with it looking like it’s approaching the ecstasy setting).
As the buzzing increases, she gets more and more enthusiastic about the ‘teaser campaign’. Until it reaches a crescendo, and I think it’s safe to say we’re supposed to assume that Abby orgasms in front of the table (much to her relief). At which everyone seems pretty impressed – “gotta love her enthusiasm, right?”.
With the excitement passed, everyone starts standing up to leave the table, and Mike discretely retrieves the remote from the kid at the other table (completely unaware of everything). When Abby asks if he knew it was there the whole time, he claims “no, not the whole time”, following with the cheeky one liner “I figured I should let you finish!”.
Abby returns the remote control safely to her handbag (switched off), but Mike still isn’t done with his one-liners, he’s saved the best (or worst?) for last: “Thanks for coming tonight”.
Our ‘expert’ analysis
Ok, it’s a good movie scene – but how accurate is it? As vibrating underwear experts, let us give you the lowdown…
The vibrating knickers
Let’s start with the star of the show – the vibrating knickers. Or rather ‘vibrating briefs’ as we found out.
The box that Abby takes the knickers out of looks quite generic, so we weren’t too hopeful in finding out the exact model. But sure enough, with some advanced freeze-frame detective work (we zoomed in and Googled it), we discovered that they are indeed the ‘Dr Laura Berman, Astrea 1 Remote Vibrating Briefs‘.
We did a bit of comparison with what we can see when Abby puts the knickers on, and they do look very similar to the product images shown for the Astrea 1 briefs. So top marks for actually using the real ones!
However, I think the team could have done a bit better in their choice of vibrating underwear – frankly from what we can tell, they’re a bit rubbish. They’re lacking in features and the vibrator device itself looks cheap. The customer reviews tell the rest of the story, with the loud vibrations being a common complaint.
If you were considering buying some vibrating knickers yourself, don’t let this put you off, there’s much better options out there.
The remote control
Ok, so this is where the Ugly Truth team clearly used some creative licence.
We get to see fleeting glimpses of the knicker’s remote in a few frames. And frankly, it looks like something an 80s James Bond villain would use to switch on his death ray.
If you’re not familiar with remote control underwear, we can assure you that in reality, all the device remotes we’ve come across have been infinitely more discrete and smaller, than the one portrayed here.
That said, they needed something that would work for the scene, and they did what they needed to. We get it.
It’s also worth pointing out that this is nothing like the real remote that comes with the Astrea 1 briefs. From what we can tell from the product images, it’s a small’ish black device with a simple on/off switch.
Did Abby really orgasm?
We found someone asking this question online, so we had to set the truth straight…
No, of course she didn’t, Abby isn’t real! She’s a character played by Katherine Heigl! And as much as we’d all like to imagine that Katherine partook in some method acting, it’s extremely unlikely. Back to the real world, people!
What do viewers have to say?
As always, the comments are a treasure trove of delights.
A fair few seem to have been inspired by it, with more than one stating: “I could do with some of these knickers!”.
There are some pretty good insights in there too though. Our favourite has to be: “No way could she pull off wearing black underwear with a white dress”. They do have a point to be fair.
Most people seem to just love the scene and find it hilarious, though.
Closing credits
All in all, we reckon it’s a pretty good scene, and who doesn’t love vibrating knickers!
If you want to find about more about the movie, have a look at The Ugly Truth listing on IMDB.
And if you want to find out more about vibrating knickers, or panty vibes, have a look at our guides here.
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