'27 Dresses'

Rating: 5/10

Starring:
Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Malin Akerman, Judy Greer, Edward Burns

Plot:
Jane (Heigl) has been a bridesmaid 27 times but never a bride. When she is asked to put on her 28th dress and be a bridesmaid at the wedding of her little sister (Akerman) to Jane’s secret love and boss (Burns), she tries to deal with planning the wedding that should have been hers.

The Good:
After her astounding performance in last year’s “Knocked Up,” Heigl shows her promising future in her first headlining movie. She’s an actress with an amazing amount of range, which is rare these days in a world full of Jessica Albas. Her awkward but ambitious portrayal of Jane turned the movie from a typical, industry-standard love story into a tolerable film.

The story is interesting enough to keep the males in the audience awake and has the romance that will have their dates wondering why the men in their life never jump on a moving boat to confess their undying love for them.

The females get to ogle over James Marsden, (“Enchanted,” “X-Men”) and the males get to do the same to Malin Akerman, or, as I like to call her, the poor man’s Cameron Diaz.

The film is a light, easygoing look at love, the wedding process and above all, finding your feminine side. (Not that I did.)

The Bad:

Within the first 10 minutes of this film, any intelligent human being will know the beginning, middle, end and every plot turn and twist along the way.

Why?

Because it’s all been seen before with better results.

There is hardly anything wrong with “27 Dresses;” it’s just executed poorly. This isn’t because it’s a bad movie; it’s just a matter of how many times you can see the same old recycled material.

It’s a typical romantic comedy with a neurotic female lead trying to find her own true love. Borrowing page after page from chick flicks of years past, the genre hasn’t felt like anything new since 1993 ­– I expected to see Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks make cameos.

All of these romantic comedies take place on alternate universes where singing “Bennie and the Jets” on a bar table is the norm and the best friend is a wisecracking nymphomaniac who tells you to follow your heart.

There are a few moments of this movie that masquerade as light and ironic yet come across as weirdly sinister for a movie about wedding dresses. Jane loses the man of her dreams twice, gets publicly humiliated, disowns her sister and quits her job. Man, talk about comedy!

The Lowdown:

“27 Dresses” is a movie that is made by, starring and marketed toward those with two X chromosomes.

It’s bright and colorful and practically smells of something from Bath and Body Works. If you’re not chanting “You Go Girl!” at least once throughout the whole movie, you may not have a pulse. Although it’s exhaustive to take in cliché after cliché, it’s a romantic comedy that works.

Sort of.

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