'27 Dresses'

Rating:

BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

January 18, 2008

Most garden-variety romantic comedies end with a wedding. Not to be outdone, "27 Dresses" is filthy with weddings. There are Jewish-Indian weddings, "Gone With the Wind" weddings, New York seaport weddings. There is line dancing. A platter of pigs-in-a-blanket makes a brief, but critical appearance.

As a serial bridesmaid named Jane, Katherine Heigl scarfs down one of those oily delicacies with the bravado of someone who could write the definitive self-help manual on surviving weddings. Scarred since childhood with an ardor for nuptial celebrations that borders on the pathological, Jane attends multiple weddings with the fervor of a cinemaniac vaulting between consecutive screenings of classic movies.

"27 Dresses" will never itself attain classic movie status, despite a closing pan shot that goes for the goose bumps and a menu of rom-com conventions that steals from the best. It is written by Aline Brosh McKenna, who adapted "The Devil Wears Prada" and seems savvy enough to appreciate that there is something a little off about a woman who lives like this. Instead, we are asked to sympathize with, if not marvel at, Jane's ebullience and magnanimity in the face of eternal backseat status.

When Jane is not jumping in and out of theatrical bridesmaids outfits, she caters to the organizational needs of her boss George (Edward Burns), who runs an eco-sensitive outdoor clothing and equipment firm. Having long burned with passion for her unsuspecting employer, Jane must now swallow the bitterest of pills: He is falling for her ditsy blonde-bombshell sister, Tess (Malin Akerman), who wantonly re-tailors her princess persona to fit George's ideal mate.

As Jane stews in self-sacrificing silence, she is pursued by a cynical but dashing style-section journalist, Kevin (James Marsden), anxious to get the goods on Jane's bridesmaid lifestyle for a tell-all column. She can't stand the guy; little does Jane know, however, that he is the writer whose wedding columns she has coveted and clipped for eons.

Under Anne Fletcher's mechanistic direction, "27 Dresses" ticks along as briskly and transparently as a clock with a see-through face.

As the vulgar gal confidante, Judy Greer shovels on the spiky ripostes with a forklift, while Akerman's witchy-sister character reaffirms one's suspicions that Hollywood harbors a secret death wish for blond goddesses who seem to spring so naturally from its soil.

On the heels of her pitch-perfect turn in "Knocked Up," Heigl makes the star leap with a surfeit of warmth, class and nimble comic timing, finding nuggets of authenticity in the script's patent artificiality. For Heigl's sake, I hope the film's a hit. For Hillary Clinton's sake, I hope it tanks. It's hard to reconcile an America that would embrace a pink-ribbon fairy tale like "27 Dresses" and install a woman as its chief executive in the next breath.

27 DRESSES (PG-13). Some woman's idea of a fantasy come true: Dad is a handsome hardware shop owner, mom is dead, boss is Edward Burns and the hound nipping at your heels is James Marsden. Happily, the dreamer in question is Katherine Heigl, who transcends the assembly-line doings of Aline Brosh McKenna's determinedly vivacious romantic comedy. 1:47 (language, some innuendo, sexuality). At area theaters.