Employing weddings to make women cry (Four Weddings and a Funeral, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Wedding Planner, The Wedding Singer, The Wedding Date) is a cheap and easy tactic. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
And yet, year after year, there they are, posters lining the hallways of cineplexes, DVD boxes crowding the New Release shelves of Blockbuster—Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock or someone of that ilk smiling in a white lace gown while some scruffy hunk stands, arms crossed in lighthearted unconcern, beside her. The trite image is Hollywood’s way of screaming “chick flick” to anyone with a soft spot in their heart for derivative romantic comedies.
 Always a Carmen Miranda, never a bride: Katherine Heigl expands her wardrobe as a recurrent bridesmaid in 27 Dresses. |
Bearing that in mind, there’s nothing patently wrong with the new romantic comedy, 27 Dresses. It does what roughly a thousand other romcoms before it have done: delivers the boy-meets-girl formula, a bunch of pretty clothes and a thoroughly conventional affirmation of the institution of marriage as the ne plus ultra in any girl’s life.
Somewhat self-effacing and occasionally winsome Katherine Heigl (“Grey’s Anatomy”) is our protagonist, Jane, a New York gal seemingly determined to live the “always a bridesmaid never a bride” motto. Jane has served as a bridesmaid on no less than 27 occasions. Rather than view this as an excuse for suicide or cat hoarding, marriage-mad Jane proudly catalogues her hideous frocks in an overstuffed closet, subscribes to countless bride magazines and spends her days reading wedding announcements in the newspaper. All of this is designed to make her appear as some sort of quirky romantic, but makes her seem more like a total crazy woman.
| Trailer for 27 Dresses. |
One day, while pulling double duty on two weddings at once, Jane bumps into scruffy hunk Kevin (James Marsden, Enchanted). Kevin’s a rude cynic. Jane’s a cheerful romantic. Wait. They’re opposites? And they’re attracted? Why hasn’t someone tried to milk this dynamic before?
Before she can get around to her break-up-to-make-up relationship with Kevin, though, Jane’s got to sort out her other cliché relationship with George (Ed Burns, the poor man’s Alec Baldwin). George is Jane’s studly, nature-loving boss upon whom she has harbored an unrequited, multiyear crush.
At some point, Jane’s irresponsible younger sister Tess (Malin Akerman, not-so-hot off The Heartbreak Kid) shows up. Tess meets and instantly falls in love with George. A few quick montages later, Tess and George are engaged, forcing spineless Jane to act as bridesmaid while her sister marries the man Jane secretly loves.
As you can probably guess, 27 Dresses holds on to traditional romcom clichés with an iron death grip, refusing to let even the most shopworn among them go free. Given the subject matter at hand, though, can you really blame filmmakers for sticking to the “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” mantra? 27 Dresses was old, plenty of it was borrowed and it certainly blew. Hey, three outta four ain’t bad.
