"27 Dresses" Review - written by Spaldy

Movie Rating: 2

Film Rating: 1

This movie was upsetting. It wasn’t because the trailers for it had all the humor of a blender baby smoothie factory. It wasn’t because I saw it by myself and the ticket taker guy gave me the look they usually give to people who go to chick flicks by themselves either. No, this movie was upsetting because not only did I not hate it, I kind of liked it a little bit. Well, the middle part anyway.

The premise is that little Jane had to overcompensate when her mother died and act as a surrogate mother to her little sister Tess. An obsessive compulsive with a need to take care of everyone, Jane’s vice is planning weddings for people. Currently she works for George, a young, smart and ecologically dreamy boss who is polite and kind to her but fails to notice her. If one has moony eyed Katherine Heigl attending to one’s every whim, how could you fail to notice her as a viable dating option? Especially when George seems to be a nice guy who doesn’t date much. I mean, Heigl is like an Amazon woman. How could he miss her?!? Of course, considering George is played by Ed Burns, how could she want him anyway?

When Jane finally intends to tell George how she really feels about him, enter her sister Tess onto the scene. Tess has an immediate connection with George and he falls for her even though everything he loves about her is what is great about Jane, not Tess. So while her sister and her love interest fall in love and get engaged, Jane sits idly by, biting her tongue, never telling her sister or George exactly how difficult it is to plan a wedding for them. Still, wedding planning is Jane’s compulsion and with her need to act as a mother to Tess anyway, she can hardly say no. Meanwhile, a handsome writer named Kevin (James Marsden) enters the scene and is instantly smitten with Jane. His attempts to woo her are shot down even though she clearly has the inability to say no to anyone else. It is immediately obvious that the two will be together.

Romantic comedies rarely stray from its formulaic DNA and the predictability factor can be a nice comfort when one is feeling low or sad or rejected. But when you are not feeling one of those things, then it can just be grating. A lot of this movie was predictable and painful to sit through. When you know what is going to happen and the sappy music rolls in on cue, a romantic comedy can be a very irksome way to spend a couple hours at the movie theatre. However, I was pleasantly surprised in the middle part of the movie. Why? Because it was not without its charm. Marsden and Heigl had a very nice friendly kind of chemistry going on here. I did not feel passion between the two but I definitely felt a kinship. For me, that is a more honest love story than two people who just want to claw at each others genitals on sight anyway. So I was little surprised and delighted with the courtship in the middle.

There were a few actual funny lines too. Not a lot, but enough for me to give this movie an extra notch on the grading scale. It was most fortunate that the least funny parts of the film found their way to the trailer. It might scare off most people from seeing the movie, but it made the movie eminently more watchable than I expected it to be.

Heigl isn’t a bad comedian if a tad over the top at times. She is very lovely on screen and it is quite nice to see a leading lady with a little meat on her bones as well. When she eats food on film, I don’t get the image in my head of her vomiting it out after the take ends like I do with a lot of actresses I see. Still, Heigl tends to play rather shrewish women, which should be of a little concern for her. It is for me.

Over all, it isn’t a terrible little comedy. It isn’t really good either. The end is schmaltzy and almost ruined the movie for me, but if it pops up on cable, I might linger for a bit. Worth a cable viewing, but I don’t think it is really worth laying out cash for.