Was the goal here to present a bunch of awful people, with no redeeming qualities, and have them have a near-death experience to humanize them?

Was the goal to show how "ugly" all these "friends" are and have no one realize the error of their ways?

Or was just a swing and a miss on behalf of the studio?

In any case, I kept watching hoping someone would be a good person and no one ever was. They all sucked, they shouldn't be friends and all the interpersonal relationships were based on self-interest. How they got all these amazing actors to take part in beyond me.

If you like your jokes innocent and inoffensive Pretty Ugly People is not for you. If you enjoy the average American TV-comedy, like Cheers, the Cosby Show or Friends, stay away from this as far as you can. If you think relation problems and human condition are to be take seriously and nothing to be mocked, if you think Oprah a source of wisdom and if you want to be comforted by some superficial moral lesson, you will think Pretty Ugly People an insult to political correctness. In the latter case you're right.

Pretty Ugly People doesn't show how people should be like, it shows how people actually are in reality. People tend to marry each other for the wrong reasons. Why else divorce? They can be egocentric and often hurt each other, exactly like the characters in Pretty Ugly People. A large part of the audience can't stomach that and prefers wearing blinkers.

So the point of Pretty Ugly People is not that the spectator should care for one or more characters. Pretty Ugly People holds a mirror and shows human failure. It does it by spoofing the genre of the well-meaning relation movies. The characters in Pretty Ugly People often say and do the wrong things on the wrong moments. Exactly that is what happens in every day life - why else all those quarrels?

Still Pretty Ugly People essentially is a feel good movie. In the end everybody is happy. Sure, two characters die, but one was irrelevant for the story. The other, Richard, was a sour man who still showed remorse before closing his eyes. And his death gave his wife Betty the opportunity to find happiness after all. Even the black congressman found what he was looking for, in a rather unusual way.

Now Pretty Ugly People is far from perfect. It could have had more politically incorrect jokes and drags a bit now and then. But I see it as a most welcome slightly cynical parody of all that moralistic stuff that has been released last couple of years.