There’s 26 More Where This One Came From | Katherine Heigl models the latest in singleton fashion in 27 Dresses.
27 DRESSES
Directed by Anne Fletcher. Starring Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Malin Akerman, Edward Burns. Opens Fri, Jan 18.
3 Stars
When Judd Apatow’s powerhouse comedy Knocked Up came out last year, I wouldn’t have wanted to be Katherine Heigl. What are you supposed to do when you’ve got the female “straight-man” role in a two-hour-long dick-joke-o-rama? Well, Heigl got by on her ability to undercut her beauty with a wide streak of neurotic romantic insecurity, which she perfected over four season of balancing on the knife edge that separates likable from irritating as Dr. Izzie Stevens on Grey’s Anatomy. And I suppose that’s why her latest film, 27 Dresses, is marginally sweeter and cleverer than the run-of-the-mill chick flick promised by the poster.
Jane (Heigl) is a gorgeous and hard-working Manhattan girl with a monumental doe-eyed crush on her boss George (Edward Burns), the head of an environmentally conscious outerwear company—the kind of guy who never wears a tie, keeps a Huffy in the corner of his office, and climbs mountains on weekends. But Jane’s real obsession is planning weddings for her friends: 27 ceremonies and counting. Like every romantic comedy heroine worth her salt, she dreams of having a special day of her own, maybe even with George, but all those fantasies go topsy-turvy when her younger sister Tess (Malin Akerman from last year’s remake of The Heartbreak Kid) drops in for a visit and sweeps George off his feet.
Toss in Jane’s best friend Casey (Judy Greer) and Kevin, a cynical, handsome young journalist vying for Jane’s affection (James Marsden, who, after Hairspray and Enchanted is carving out a nice little niche for himself as the ridiculously-handsome-guy-with-surprisingly-good-comic-timing) and you have the very essence of a flowery, predictable date movie. Did I mention that there’s even one of those scenes where the two warring soon-to-be-lovers go to a dive bar and fall in love during a drunken karaoke session? Yeah, that’s here too. The song this time is “Bennie and the Jets.”
And yet, despite a setup that seemed tediously familiar six years ago when Jennifer Lopez used it in The Wedding Planner, 27 Dresses has enough fresh, sunny spirit to make it marginally worth recommending. The great romantic comedy actresses of the past—especially Heigl’s namesake Katharine Hepburn—probably wouldn’t think much of the way the nearly 30-year-old Heigl clings to such a drippy teenage notion of romance and marriage (and it’s a little off-putting to see Jane tell George about her sister’s sordid romantic past in hopes of cooling his ardour for her), but there’s something so sweet and unaffected about that damned dimpled smile of hers as she schlumps around in a series of memorably hideous bridesmaid dresses that makes you root for Heigl to quite pining after George and find happiness with Kevin. Like 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada (also written by Aline Brosh McKenna), 27 Dresses undercuts its female wish-fulfillment fantasy with welcome jolts of tart, cynical humour—it’s like a gooey wedding cake with some lemon juice in the icing.
It might not have the edge of something like Knocked Up, but that’s okay. The idea that Seth Rogen could get a girl who looks like Katherine Heigl wasn’t exactly the most realistic romantic-comedy plot point ever invented; why shouldn’t Heigl get to live out a fantasy for a change?
