27 Dresses

A hot looking girl with a kickass body and a brain apparently can’t find the “right guy” for herself, and ends up being the bridesmaid at 27 other girlfriends’ weddings. Yeah, it’s a movie, folks…just go with it! The rest of the story involves her being “in love” with her boss, her boss falling for her sister and a douchebag columnist chasing after her, but with little success. I’ll let you guess who she ends up with, but suffice it to say, it’s not her sister! That woulda been hot. The film, however, is…not really good.

It’s “chick flicks” like this that give all chick flicks a bad name. Despite what some may think, I personally don’t mind watching a chick flick every now and again, as long as it tries to create something that makes sense, seems reasonable enough to be possible, attempts to be somewhat creative and features characters that you could give a tampon about. This film doesn’t really care much about all that, focusing more on its soundtrack, its montage sequences, and its see-through machinations, almost all of which are contrived beyond belief and unbelievable to boot. For example, how many times are we gonna see someone (or a couple of people) start to sing a song in a public place (out loud) before someone puts a stop to this cinematic nonsense? In this film, Katherine Heigl and James Marsden start to sing along with Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets” in a bar, and as per any other bar in the United States, the rest of the patrons all find their singing “amusing” enough to join in, to the point that the two actors are stomping away on top of the bar and leading a chorus of people to the song. Gimme a fuckin’ break! I don’t mind little “oddities” as such in a romantic comedy, but this film was filled with similar moments that felt false and “written”, just like its characters, all of whom had issues and none of whom I truly thought was an interesting or caring human being.

Take Marsden, for example. Could the guy be a bigger prick at the beginning of the movie? Not only is he boorish, but some of his behavior actually borders on the “stalker” side, to the point that I could see someone pressing charges against him in certain cases (he also looked like a cleaner-cut version of Adrian Grenier of “Entourage” fame). Heigl is no better, a gorgeous woman who as per most typical “romantic comedies” is clueless as to what’s wrong with her, and just wants to find the “right guy” to complete her (look in the mirror, honey…you’re a pathological liar who can’t say “no” to anyone). Ed Burns doesn’t help matters, even though his character is about as nice a guy as you could find in a movie, he’s too much on the other extreme: he’s perfect! Not only do they have him being great looking, rich, nice and philanthropic, but he also works with the Big Brother program and when someone messes up his plans for marriage in a major way, he blows it off the next day, like it wasn’t such a “big deal” and says something along the lines of “It’s fine, let’s just move on now.” Dude, this person just fucked up your plans to marry the woman of your dreams and you’re blasé about it?!? Nobody is that great! Burns was also pretty dull overall, and seemed like he wanted to be in an “Ed Burns movie” rather than this piece of shit. Malin Akerman should ask her agent to stop sending her out for these one-dimensional “bitch from hell” roles. She plays them well, but again…it’s kinda boring when there’s no real depth to the character.

All in all, these characters float around a made up story about this beautiful woman who is “always the bridesmaid, but never the bride”. In the old days, Meg Ryan or Sandy Bullock would play this role, but I guess Heigl is the “flavor of the day” these days, so she got the part. One thing she proved to me in this film is that she was not the reason that
KNOCKED UP was such a success. She just doesn’t seem very funny to me. Maybe it’s just me though, not sure. The film’s plot “turns” were also ridiculous with the typical “misunderstanding” nearing the 3rd act leading to the usual “running after” the protagonist with only a few minutes left in the film (mind you, the protagonist wasn’t really going anywhere, so I’m not sure why there was a need to “run”, but I suppose that makes for better “thea-ta”). All in all, I can’t say that this film was offensively bad or anything, it may “pass the time” if your girlfriend insists that you watch it together, but really, it’s about as uninspired as they come, and in terms of laughs, I can’t say that I laughed out loud more than once the whole time. It does have a couple of cute romantic moments though. That said, if you loved THE WEDDING PLANNER, you’ll love 27 DRESSES! For a better/cuter version of this film, check out HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian