Review: 27 Dresses

Katherine Heigel has managed to achieve that much sought after but rarely attained goal – the successful move from small screen to big. The rocky road to the silver screen is littered with the debris of fallen TV angels – Aniston, Schwimmer and Perry to name but a few. Perhaps only George Clooney has managed to do it successfully in more recent years – but Heigel has cracked it too, with her second consecutive, watchable and amusing comedy. (Knocked Up was OK – this is more polished and contains a greater number of quality gags).

Heigel has great comic timing and the film is a perfect vehicle for that – it is actually not a bad romp in a super girly movie kind of way. She pulls off Jane, the perennial and loyal bridesmaid very convincingly, but also manages to be assertive and sassy along the way. Perhaps one of the best gags in the film is in response to her Aunt’s comment that it must be hard for her to watch her younger sister get married before her. She replies dead pan – “Yes, but then I remember that I still get to have hot hate sex with random strangers and I feel so much better!” Handsome lead James Marsden plays Kevin, the wedding photographer with mixed professional and personal motives. He is an easy combination of icy and charming – his big blue eyes and picture perfect smile are tempered nicely by the doom he unwittingly orchestrates.

In a scene to rival Cameron Diaz singing karaoke in My Best Friends Wedding, Jane and Kevin dance on the bar to Benny and the Jets in a blaze of shooter fueled frivolity, whipping up the “middle-of-nowhere” locals into a real frenzy. Its one of those scenes you can’t help but laugh at and adds to the feel good factor of the film.

Sure the film has some moments that don’t quite ring true – Heigel’s public unveiling of younger sister Tess is perhaps a little over the top, and the scene where she tries on all 27 of her bridesmaid dresses for Kevin is coated in fromage, but is probably done so on purpose. The director, Anne Fletcher, and the screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna, who did such a smart job adapting The Devil Wears Prada, may not have made a film of quite the same calibre as the Anna Wintour tale, but then it seems obvious that 27 Dresses is not trying to be anything other than a romantic chick flick comedy. It would seem to have achieved this goal; froth – check, montages – check, happy ending – check.