27 Dresses

As the title reveals, this film is about a young woman named Jane (Katherine Heigl) who has dutifully served as a bridesmaid for exactly 27 of her closest female friends. She’s wedding obsessed, dreams of her own big day and keeps the dresses as mementos of her sad, always-a-bridesmaid life. The romantic conflict in the film is established when Jane’s hot younger sister Tess comes to town and snags the man Jane’s been secretly in love with for years. Meanwhile, Jane is being courted by a guy she finds infuriating, who turns out to secretly be the writer of her favourite wedding column. So begins the predictable setup of romantic miscommunication that drags on to an inevitably pleasant conclusion nearly two hours later. James Marsden is charming as the infuriating would-be suitor and Heigl manages to be funny and cutely pathetic as lonely Jane. Everyone else turns in single-note performances that are considerably less colourful than Jane’s closet full of dresses. Interviews with the costume designer in the special features detail the construction of the elaborate wardrobe, and getting to see all the designs a bit more closely than they appear in the film is definitely a highlight. "The Wedding Party” is a featurette that rehashes the plot of the film via interviews with the cast but "You’ll Never Wear It Again” (the costuming featurette) and "The Running of the Brides” (a mini-doc on real life brides’ rabid hunt for dresses at an annual blow-out sale) are among the best parts of the DVD. This film’s ad campaign boasted that it was being brought to us by the makers of The Devil Wears Prada, one of 2006’s most disappointingly mediocre romantic comedies. In both cases, the wardrobes and a couple of standout performances shine while the appallingly predictable plots don’t even rise to the forgiving standards of formulaic rom-com fans.