Always a bridesmaid
In
”
27 Dresses
”
Jane (Katherine Heigl) is the perfect maid of honor. She never
says no to any last minute request, she is meticulous about details
and she has plenty of practice. In fact, she’s so good, she has
served as the right hand to 27 brides in 27 hideous dresses.
She is obsessed with the idea of the perfect wedding. She clips
out engagement and wedding announcements from the paper. And she
uses her obsession for the good of her friends.
Always a bridesmaid
In “27 Dresses” Jane (Katherine Heigl) is the perfect maid of honor. She never says no to any last minute request, she is meticulous about details and she has plenty of practice. In fact, she’s so good, she has served as the right hand to 27 brides in 27 hideous dresses.
She is obsessed with the idea of the perfect wedding. She clips out engagement and wedding announcements from the paper. And she uses her obsession for the good of her friends.
That is, until her younger sister (Malin Akerman), decides to marry George (Edward Burns.)
Jane has mastered the art of pining. It is something I understand well. Just ask the friends who are always telling me to stop being such a chicken and let my love interest know how I feel. But Jane has me beat by a long shot. She has secretly been in love with George for more than eight years. She is his assistant and the qualities that make her good at being a maid of honor – basically being a pushover – make her a great assistant to the owner of an outdoor clothing company.
She is content to admire George from afar and do his bidding at work, while spending her weekends at wedding after wedding. But her world begins to crumble when her glamorous younger sister, Tess, shows up at a party and George is immediately smitten.
Jane is supposed to be the plain one, but to be honest it is a bit hard to think of the willowy Katherine Heigl that way. She’s 5’9″ and built like a Victoria Secret’s model – in fact she plays a model turned doctor in “Grey’s Anatomy” – so believing that George would never have noticed her in all those years is a hard one to buy. Her hair was turned a mousy shade of brown and she dressed conservatively to cover up a bit of her natural beauty in the movie.
Jane struggles as George and her sister start to spend more time together, especially when her sister starts lying to George. She is suddenly a vegetarian because George is a vegetarian; she says she loves to hike though she is rarely seen out of heels; and the lies continue to stack up. When the two announce their intention to marry, Jane is thrown for a loop.
Luckily for her, she has someone else to distract her in the good-looking Kevin (James Marsden). The two meet at a wedding early in the movie.
Kevin is a writer for a newspaper, but he is stuck writing wedding announcements. He is cynical about true love and lasting marriages, and constantly hassles his editor to move him off the beat. He happens across a great feature story when he picks up the planner Jane left behind in a shared cab. He sees all the wedding events she has scheduled. He pitches a story on her as a single woman who is always a bridesmaid but never a bride to his editor who eats it up.
Of course, as a journalist, I take offense to the tactics Kevin uses to get his story. Jane believes he is writing a wedding announcement for her sister when he is really working on angle about her. He even goes so far as to show up at her house with a digital camera and photographs her in the various bridesmaid dresses she has held on to over the years.
The movie is predictable, but it has very funny moments in it. The peripheral characters, such as George and Tess are underdeveloped and their motives are not very clear. One of the best performances comes from Judy Greer as Jane’s best friend Casey. Greer plays the parts of sarcastic sidekicks or back stabbers well.
The best scene is one in which Jane and Kevin sing “Benny and the Jets” while standing on the bar – and it’s not a karaoke bar. The worst scene is the aforementioned modeling of the dresses. I’ve heard of themed weddings, but come on, Little Bo Peep, for Pete’s sake? Any good friend would certainly talk a bride out of that misfortunate idea.
In the end, the movie is about Jane taking responsibility for what she wants and learning to say no once in a while. Unless, of course, the man of her dreams is popping the question. Then the answer has to be yes.
