27 Dresses

Starring Katherine Heigl and James Marsden

27 Dresses is your average romantic comedy. It's formulaic, it's predictable, and most of its characters are characters used in every romantic comedy. But. Heigl and Marsden make a great team, bringing out the best in each other, and there were some scenes where I was laughing pretty hard.

Jane has been in 27 weddings. And she's never been the bride. Jane is a bridesmaid. The perfect bridesmaid. She's the bride's best friend, the hairdresser, the dress model, the do-everything person. Jane's real job is assistant manager at a company. She happens to be madly in love with her boss, George. Jane has a sister named Tess who has come for a short little visit. Unfortunately, Jane introduces Tess to George, the two hit it off, and all of a sudden, they're getting married. And Jane has to plan the wedding. Into the picture comes Kevin, a writer for the Commitments column of the local paper who writes the most poetic things about weddings. In reality, however, Kevin is a bitter, cynical guy who hates weddings and thinks they're stupid. But Kevin finds Jane's perennial bridesmaid situation intriguing and, unbeknownst to her, decides to write a story on her.

Things get crazy. Jane is in love with George, who is marrying her sister Tess, who is lying to George, who doesn't know Jane loves him and Kevin is the perfect guy for Jane and Kevin likes Jane but Jane doesn't realize it because she's too busy pining after her sister's fiance. What can I say? It's classic. Romantic comedy that is. Heigl, best known for her role in Knocked Up and ABC's Grey's Anatomy, really shines. She's proven herself to be a great romantic comedy actress, and she does show a lot of potential for other roles; I just hope she takes advantage of that. Marsden is great too. His breakout role was in X-Men as Cyclops, and has since then managed to pick chronically blockbuster films to add to his resume (X-Men series, The Notebook, Superman, Hairspray, and Enchanted). I'd go to see a film just because Marsden makes an appearance, I enjoy his performances that much. 27 had some cute concepts, like Jane keeping all of her 27 hideous bridesmaid dresses, and Marsden's character was interesting. So to wrap it up, on to the conclusion...

Conclusion: Fun and entertaining, but predictability took away from that. Marsden and Heigl are great on screen together so if you like chick flicks, go ahead and check it out.

Rated: PG-13 for language, some innuendo and sexuality.

See the trailer

Trivia:

• The wardrobe department reported that their initial designs for the dresses all looked too good on Katherine Heigl because of her figure, and they were hard-pressed to design bridesmaids dresses that would look bad on her.