27 DRESSES

Jane (Katherine Heigl) is the living embodiment of the old saying "always a bridesmaid, never a bride." Just when she thinks her life can't get any lonlier, her sister Tess (Malin Akerman) announces her engagement to the man of Jane's dreams. But which sibling will eventually end up standing at the altar first?


Cast Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Malin Akerman, Edward Burns, Melora Hardin, Judy Greer
Director(s) Anne Fletcher
Writer(s) Aline Brosh McKenna
Status In theaters (wide)
Genre(s) Comedy
Release Date Jan. 18, 2008
Running Time 107 minutes
Web Site 27dressesthemovie.com

Who's in It: Katherine Heigl, Malin Akerman, Edward Burns, James Marsden, Judy Greer

The Basics: Heigl hoards bridesmaid dresses and secretly loves her boss (Burns) who, in turn, is about to marry Heigl's sister. Meanwhile, Marsden worms his way into Heigl's life just so he can write a mean-spirited newspaper article about her. Who do you think winds up falling in love? Guess! Go on, guess!

What's the Deal? Welcome to 2008, an enlightened time when women aren't obsessed with weddings and willing to waste years of their lives secretly pining for male-genitalia-having blocks of wood; a time of assertive, interesting, vibrant women who've absorbed the lessons of their hippie feminist mothers and realized that no man who uses them and lies to them and publicly humiliates them is worth one more second of however much time he's been given. Except in this movie, which takes place in Crazy Backwards Shallow Values Land and where everyone's a moron.

What You Finally Learn About Heigl's Character From Watching the Part Where They Show You All the Dresses and a Montage of the Weddings Where She Wore Them: That she has a lot of wacky, interesting friends, none of whom seem to share anything in common with Heigl's blank-slate personality, made up of 50 percent pretty and 50 percent nice.

Who Makes You Wish It Was About Her Instead: Greer. She's the smarter, funnier, loves-to-drink-and-have-sex friend of Heigl's that they bring in to liven things up from time to time. Her fate is to be single. But when the alternative is to be married to bores like Marsden's or Burns' characters, you wind up envying her.

Advice for the Star That She'll Never Read:
Dear Katherine,
In your recent Vanity Fair interview you say that Knocked Up "paints women as shrews" and as "humorless." But you know what? At least the female characters in that movie had personalities. This one paints its heroine as a simpering fool who's easily manipulated and then throws away her own dignity for the sake of getting a man. Gross. Find a better script next time. Even if it's written by Judd Apatow.