27 DRESSES

Knocked Up and now 27 Dresses, one wonders where the gorgeous and talented Katherine Heigl has been all these years. She's almost like a modern day Meg Ryan. She can play witty, excitable, sometimes a strong independent modern woman but always with that undercurrent of despairing sadness that she's too nice and not conventionally beautiful to get the man she really wants. She's the perfect embodiment of a typical rom-com lead and thank God Judd Apatow noticed this and set her own her way last year. She absolutely shines in this movie, her first branch out as a leading actress of her own and in a premise and plot eerily similar to another rom-com I enjoyed, Curtis Hanson's 2005 film In Her Shoes. Shame it's only about 1/27th as good. Like that movie we have a gorgeous (but incredibly no-one in this fictional land seems to think so) lead who takes her romantic frustrations and a rather masochistic depressive mental state into being a bridesmaid at as many people's weddings as she can. Sometimes this involves even two a night, and she is just so great at it, everyone wants her for their big day. She's been to so many weddings and worn so many outfits that she decides to keep them all in an over-spilling wardrobe in her tiny New York apartment. Her love for weddings and their dresses are Toni Collete's love for shoes. Then you have the man she is attracted to which in this case is not a co-worker but actually her boss played by the rather one-tone Edward Burns, but sadly the affection doesn't seem to be mutual. She is just his assistant, there to be ordered around, Heigl will be lucky if any of Burns' compliments are anything but appreciation for the work she does and to keep her as his work puppy. Like In Her Shoes, the character of lust for our lead falls into the hands of her spoilt but full of life sister, played superbly by Malin Akerman (who looks and acts like Cameron Diaz circa 1998) and their lightning quick and actually unbelievable romance fuels the fire for the obvious plot device of another wedding. The 28th! Now she must be bridesmaid for her sister who is marrying the object of her affection in her mum's wedding dress she always wanted to wear. 27 Dresses is full of cliche, almost a cooking up of 27 other romantic comedies from where those dresses belong and stirred up into one tasteless movie which hasn't got a cent of originality about it. James Marsden is for the 100th time of his career cast as 'the other guy' but this time he gets to play a rather straight character but sadly he can't conjure up any chemistry with the easily likable Heigl (which is weird because Seth Rogen could do it) and one of the most excruciatingly bad scenes of the movie is a drunken and wet duet between the pair late one night in a bar murdering Elton John's classic "Bennie and the Jets" which gets the whole bar in chorus. That's right folks, there's not much truth or sincerity about this film. But Katherine Heigl's performance is so strong and after years of false choices and bad career decisions she is finally starting to be put into a spotlight she probably more deserves. She really has been the bridesmaid all her career, showing great promise but never quite fulfilling it as an actress and this film is almost her breaking out and you can really feel like she knows it with her energetic performance. With Knocked Up and 27 Dresses, she is the bride now and doesn't she just radiate?

rating: 2