Saturday, January 19, 2008

Movie review - 27 Dresses

Ahhhh, chick flicks; the film genre equivalent of romance novels. You know what's going to happen. They know you know what's going to happen and doesn't pretend to be anything but a fluffy confection. And if you walk into 27 Dresses expecting a something heavy or with a sad ending...I think you need to reassess why you go to see movies. Flaneur and I were catching up after not having seen each other in years and so went to see this because we needed a movie that only went for 1.5 untaxing hours.

27 Dresses
starts off with adult Jane (Katherine Heigl) explaini
ng how was a 10 year old, she fell in love with the happiness inherent in weddings and how she likes to help that happiness along. Fast-forward about 20 years and Jane has become the equivalent of a professional bridesmaid by helping anyone who asks her to be a become one and help organise the wedding to the extent that she's done it 27 times (natch). At one of these weddings she meets Kevin (James Marsden) who does go to weddings professionally - he's a columnist who writes about weddings - but is the opposite of Jane because he's cynical about the whole wedding thing. Despite Kevin's good looks and obvious attraction to her, Jane's not interested because she's been in love forever with her boss George (Ed Burns)...who then falls in love at first sight with Jane's sister Tess...who then asks Jane to organise their wedding. You see where this is going, right?

There's no real point of me doing a huge Departed/Infernal Affairs-style analysis, nor did it enrage me enough to do a Miami Vice/Just Friends-esque movie assassination. The main points are thus:
1. Kevin and Jane had nice chemistry when they were bickering together. I'm not sure if that was really transmitted into romantic chemistry but I did feel a bit teary when they got to their big misunderstanding.
2. The reason for Kevin's cynicism (failed marriage) was brushed over in about two lines and not explored at all.
3. Tess is shown throughout to be a pretty shallow bitch to the ext
ent that she does something pretty horrid to something that had a lot of sentimental value to Jane. And again, her character does a massive turnaround in about 2 minutes.
4. Sure, he's good looking but I didn't see the appeal of George to Jane. He totally took advantage of her taking care of every aspect of his life for 10 years with only token thanks and I can't believe she didn't get over her crush in about three years.

Nothing groundbreaking, but hey, chick flicks almost never are.
27 Dresses lives up to the soft and fluffy and formulaic perceptions of the genre but not in an unpleasant way. It filled in exactly what I needed it to be - something nice and short and unchallenging for a Saturday evening.
6/10

P.S. I have been advised to post a photo of James Marsden because he's pretty smokin' looking. Enjoy! (photo from rottentomatoes.com)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good picture! You can't miss his boyish charm and if you need one reason to watch 27 dresses - then this would be it!