Convincing to a point, that is, until you indulge in something as simple as a sugary-sweet romantic comedy called The Ugly Truth. Viewed intuitively, it obliterates her arguments against Evolutionary Psychology. While the "animal side" of our nature produces much harm, it is also absolutely necessary to find life's greatest gift - love.

Like many fields of psychology, one might be tempted to wrap a set of principles around each and every human behavior and experience, then come face to face with the specific exceptions it does not explain. Instead, wouldn't it be sensible to see each model that emerges as a piece of a grand puzzle, an amalgam or synthesis of all former theory which has been called "unification theory" - to this point, a patchwork or stew of models which, collected, do their best to explain as much of our inner clockworks as possible.

What if Evolutionary Psychology speaks quite accurately, and only, to the "animal nature" of human beings, to instinct, and impulses, drives and unconscious pressures and motivations that, no, are not logical in a classical sense, but only insofar as the pressures of environments through history exerted on the human species.

And even found a biological purpose for men and women to grow different habits, preferences, traits, motivators, desires and passions than the other.

Enter The Ugly Truth - a film full of expectable twists, and a formulaic, but pleasing plot. Yet, so honest, and genuine in dialogue, issues, and gender realism.

Chadwick, the ne'er-do-well host of a late night cable access show on men's psychology and gender played by Gerard Butler, meets the refined, sexually impoverished producer played by Katherine Heigl.

He is all masculine animal, full of passion and truth-telling about the real and illogical instincts that run men's and women's behavior. He is a master of "the animal" in us in fact, while Heigl's character is the mature, sophisticated, and uber-logical-to-a-fault feminine woman who is at a loss for why she cannot attract the man of her dreams.

In the end, she teaches Butler the value and potential of love and commitment, and he teaches her the humanizing power of the passions, the unconscious drives, and the primitive beauty of the animal inside us all.

"Inside" us is the key to understanding.

Perhaps you have heard of "Russian Nesting Dolls," called Matryuschka Dolls. They are the wooden, lacquered figurines which, when opened, reveal another doll, inside the doll, inside the doll.

One early precept of Evolutionary Psychology is the notion of Paul McLean's Triune Brain Theory - that in the course of evolution, the brains of species evolved from a more primitive, survivalist, "Reptilian Brain," to sprout on top of it, the emotional circuitry of social animals called mammals, with "Mammalian Brains." Then later, with the rise of the human species, the "most advanced animals," who have a well-developed neocortex capable of rational thought, abstract reasoning, and a sense of sentience, rights, responsibility, boundaries, ethics or morality. "The Moral Animal."

If these were to be seen as a kind of triple software package of the mind rather than just placed in anatomical position in the cranium, one could envision them like the Russian Dolls, the sum total of our behavior as more than the sum of its parts, with a rational mind capable of diplomacy on the surface, emotion underneath, and at the core, still there after eons, the "animal."

Begley is looking at Evolutionary Psychology and the behaviors it explains as if it espouses that "animals" are all humans are capable of being. Her rightful concern that deviants in society could cite it as an excuse for criminal or unethical behavior is well-founded.

But we are more than just animals. We must not forget the mature, moral, diplomatic, courteous "doll" of the "Higher Brained" neocortex, covering the doll of the "Mammalian Brained" emotional circuitry, covering the doll that is the Reptilian Brain - the drives, reproductive and survival instincts, passions of the unconscious.

In the common sense of a simple romantic comedy, we see and recognize something true and universal about men and women and how they behave, feel and act passionately about. We discover that we are far more than animals.
We are capable of love, maturity, commitment, teamwork, and have a natural sense of story, plot and meaning in our romances.

But we need to not throw out the "animal nature" which fires the passions for the opposite gender, ignoring it or pretending it is not there, as did Heigl's character for so long, and to the detriment of her quality of life.

Like all genuine experiences and authentic romances, this fairy tale reminds us that what seems so complex about us, and some things in that complexity, if they were all we are, would be frightening. Yet, seen as a mosaic of behavior and needs, desires, passions, logic, personality, character, maturity, and narratives of life - we are beautiful.

Even the animal side.