Actresses lost in land of bromance

Yes, being a movie star is still a bigger deal in America than being a television star, and “Grey’s Anatomy’’ is battle-weary, but surely the chance to portray a woman who looks like she was constructed of a quiz in Glamour circa 1985 is not why she entered her profession.

There are more and better roles for women on one season of “Brothers and Sisters’’ and “Big Love’’ or “Damages’’ and “Desperate Housewives’’ than there will be in an entire year of Hollywood films. Roles that require depth and wisdom and boundless energy, that demand of their performers dramatic flexibility and exploration of character. Roles that don’t seem to punish them simply for being women.

Unfortunately, an actress who wants to be a movie star doesn’t have that kind of choice, especially now that bromance has replaced romance and so many comedies seem happy to dispense with women altogether.

So it’s not surprising that so many of the current crop of top actresses have tried to squeeze themselves into variations of the same part - the neurotic single woman so consumed either by her (hollow, unsatisfying) career or her many neuroses that she requires the interventions of a man, often schleppy, usually immature and/or emotionally abusive, to teach her the true nature of love. (Which often seems to involve her quitting her high-pressure, high-power job.)

Sandra Bullock (“The Proposal’’); Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly, and Ginnifer Goodwin (“He’s Just Not That Into You’’); Renée Zellweger (“New in Town’’); and Isla Fisher (“Confessions of a Shopaholic’’) have all found themselves doing the “Taming of the Shrew’’ two-step without the benefit of Richard Burton or Shakespeare.

But Heigl is the ruling champ of the postmodern shrew, having done it three times in as many years in “Knocked Up,’’ “27 Dresses,’’ and now “The Ugly Truth,’’ which opened Friday to tepid reviews but respectable box office.

While Heigl and other stars are stuck in narrow, nasty movie roles, women get to do just about anything on TV.

They can chase down aliens (“Fringe’’), converse with angels (“Saving Grace’’), race through jungles and time continuums (“Lost’’), catch serial killers while wearing hats and high heels (“The Closer’’), and play both sides of the legal field with the likes of William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden (“Damages).

They can even, as Heigl’s Izzie Stevens has, be a model turned surgical resident with a child given up for adoption, who almost kills her lover to save him only to have him die anyway and show up as a ghost who is actually a brain tumor that may or may not have killed her mere days after her wedding to another guy.

Compared with the insulting plot of “The Ugly Truth,’’ this “Grey’s Anatomy’’ plot line seems a model of depth and narrative restraint.