27 Dresses

27 Dresses

Directed by Anne Fletcher

(PG-13)

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Forever a bridesmaid, Katherine Heigl yearns to take her turn as bride.

??

Anne Fletcher’s 27 Dresses is a perfectly average romantic comedy, said Meghan Keane in The New York Sun. The pleasantly predictable film borrows from nearly every wedding-themed dilemma Hollywood has offered in recent years. There’s been My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Wedding Planner, and now 27 Dresses, which fashions a feature from every singleton’s least favorite saying, “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” Katherine Heigl, in her first leading role, is that ever-hopeful perennial bridesmaid, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. She plays Jane Nichols, who over the years has acquired 27 bridesmaid dresses “in all their fruit-hued, puffy-sashed, prom-discard plumage.” She must now plan a wedding to the man of her dreams. Unfortunately, she isn’t the bride—her sister is. 27 Dresses relishes the “get-me-to-the-altar-mood,” and that’s what makes it a guilty pleasure. Basically “white-lace porn for girls of every age,” the film plays into women’s insecurities rather than rejecting them. The film may follow a formula, but it’s still fun, said Joe Leydon in Variety. Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote the script for The Devil Wears Prada, gives the cast enough good lines to get by. Heigl, the darling opportunist, brings “hilarity and heartbreak” to the role, and her charm helps audiences forget they’ve been down this aisle before.