27 DRESSES

20th Century Fox
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: C+
Directed by: Anne Fletcher
Written By: Aline Brosh McKenna
Cast: Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Malin Akerman, Edward Burns, Judy Greer
Screened at: Regal E-Walk, NYC, 12/27/07
Opens: January 18, 2008

In the album “Surfin’ Beach Party,” some of the lyrics to the song “Surf City” go like this: “Well I’m going to Surf City/ Cause it’s two to one/ You Know I’m gonna Surf City/ Gonna have some fun now/ Two girls for every boy.”

Guys, if you’re looking to meet some women and you like ratios like that, you don’t have to go to Surf City. Just go to a chick flick. Like what? Like “27 Dresses,” where you’re likely to find a ratio more like four to one. What’s more you’ll find few in the audience over the age of thirty. Sound good? Go then. But if too many of you guys take my advice, be warned, that the ratio could be evened out. What’s the point of this? Essentially that it’s a shame that some movies are put into such cubbyholes. Examples: This is an actioner that would be appreciated only by the video-game set. (Maybe that one is true.) This one is violent like “There Will Be Blood” or “Sweeney Todd,” so the fair sex might want to stay away. (That would be unfortunate, indeed.) This deals with the problem of a young women who is often a bridesmaid, never a bride. (Guys, why would that not be within your sphere of interest?) There’s nothing in “27 Dresses,” really that would make a red-blooded American male of any age say, “Bah humbug. This is not for me.” This is not to say that “27 Dresses” is a biting satire, a stunning eye-opener, a breath of fresh air, a new way of looking at an old issue. Anne Fletcher’s movie, written by Aline Brosh McKenna (“The Devil Wears Prada”) is none of these things, but it’s fairly involving, it moves, has characters who are almost believable, and you can make worse choices if you’re looking for something commercial that’s opening in the dreaded movie month of January.

“27 Dresses” does follow the standard trajectory of romantic films, i.e. the couple that you just know will get together at the conclusion is kept apart, gets together, is thrown apart once again, is brought together, apart, together, until you begin to lose count. Katherine Heigl this time has two men quite a bit more handsome and appealing to choose between than she had in Paul Apatow’s “Knocked Up” (sorry, Seth), nor does either match the folks in her previous story for vulgarity, I’m sorry to say. But if you want that PG-13 rating, you’ve got to play the game.

Heigl dominates the movie in the role of a saintly Jane, who despite her good looks and smarts is always looking out for her friends while ignoring her own needs. In short, she has an address book filled with dates—not with her own boyfriends but with her appointments serving as bridesmaids to her many friends, twenty-seven in all. She has actually kept all the gowns she has worn to their affairs, from Japanese kimonos to yee-hah cowgirl outfits to sharp business suits, while for quite a while she has nursed a secret longing for her boss, George (Edward Burns). When George falls in love at first sight with Jane’s younger sister Tess (Malin Akerman), Jane musters all her inner strength to pretend happiness. Her very belief in big weddings as Utopia On Earth is challenged by a cynical journalist, Kevin (James Marsden), who like a twenty-first century Marxist lashes out at the folly of spending lavishly on a five-hour ceremony in which a man and a woman pretend to be royalty in a country that had long ago renounced titles of nobility.

Much of the humor of “27 Dresses” comes from Jane’s frantic taxi rides from one ceremony to another. Though she attended, and fell in love with, her first ceremony at the age of eight (played by Peyton List), she went into high gear in her late twenties, in one case changing dresses in the back seat of a taxi while cajoling the driver not to look in his rear-view mirror lest he lost his tip. With a closet bulging with dresses that could keep her going to Halloween functions for the next twenty-seven years, she entertains both Kevin—who snaps one picture of Jane in each outfit—and those in the audience with a particular interest in fashion, by trying on a representative sample.

Of course you have to suspend disbelief. Do bridesmaids get to keep the dresses that are rented for them by the brides? And would a good looking woman like Jane, who obviously gets the chance to meet scores of men at these very weddings, if not in the office and other locations, be so date-less that her book is filled with wedding planners’ duties?

The picture would have been better if it were more biting, more critical of the bloated wedding industry given that so much is spent by so many for so little time. Perhaps you know some people who are told by their parents, “I’ll give you a choice: a down payment on a co-op, or full payment of your wedding,” and believe or not, the prospective brides choose the latter!” A good example of what I’d have preferred would be something on the level of Debbie Isitt’s “Confetti,” also a 20th Century Fox production, in which three couples compete for Most Original Wedding: one chooses a tennis theme, another a nudist motif, a third all-singing, all dancing nuptials.

Bland though “27 Dresses” may be, James Marsden is reliable as ever, though I wish his character did not moderate his cynicism, Scandinavian-born Malin Akerman acts too much the floozy to have attracted Ed Burns’s character, and Katherine Heigl has not been allowed to cut loose as she had been in “Knocked Up.” Was this really written by the scripter for “The Devil Wears Prada?”

Rated PG-13. 107 minutes. © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online