27 Dresses (2008)

Tess: ...you would never hurt me. I'm your sister.
Jane: That was yesterday. Today you're just the bitch who broke my heart and cut up my mother's wedding dress.

We are building a romantic comedy.

It couldn't be that difficult, seeing the quality of the genre. We need a man (James Marsden) and a woman (Katherine Heigl) to fall in love. The man should have an unscrupulous satyr for a best friend (Maulik Pancholy), and the woman needs a mousy female companion (Judy Greer).

Now we need a conceit

some flimsy pretext to move the story along. The film opens with a voiceover explaining the that the lead character, Jane, has an obsession with matrimony. The title, 27 Dresses, is in reference to the many bridesmaid's dresses that she has accumulated over the years. Kevin is is a writer for the style section of a major newspaper who specializes in committment announcements. Jane secretly pines for her boss, who is getting engaged TO HER SISTER. AWWW!

Heigl and Marsden have very nice on-screen chemistry, and the scene where she tries on all of the dresses is precious (I'm a sucker for clothing montages). Heigl is gorgeous and has great energy; Marsden is cute in that smirky, attractive male lead sort of way. It is a nice change from hating him as Cyclops in the X-Men movies. The reason I watched it was because the screenplay was written by Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote the screenplay for The Devil Wears Prada, one of my favorite movies.

The parts between the two leads are enjoyable, the rest of the movie is deadly dull. The best dialogue is in these scenes. In the end, it is slightly more than mediocre genre fare.