27 Dresses: Always A Bridesmaid (and a wedding planner)
I love weddings. I have a dream wedding Pinterest board. I've been a participant in two family members' weddings (train bearer for aunt's first, junior bridesmaid for a cousin) and will be a bridesmaid for my younger sister's upcoming wedding this May. I've attended countless other wedding receptions, from those held in LDS chapel cultural halls, to one at the Camp Williams officer's club, to one held on the rooftop of a high end apartment complex in Orem. My favorite wedding site is Offbeat Bride.
You'd think I'd have already seen this movie before a few hours ago from all that. Nope. I don't watch a lot of romantic comedies, although I do have two that I love to death: My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because we're all fruit, and Sweet Home Alabama, because my Mom's a lot like the heroine now that I think about it (self-made woman from the rural South). But those are reviews for another day. Right now, we're talking about 27 Dresses.
The first scene is narrated by our heroine, Jane Nichols (Katherine Heigl), as she recounts the tale of how, as a young girl, she helped her aunt fix her wedding gown mere minutes before she walked down the aisle. Jane says that this was the moment that she realized her knack for helping out at weddings.
Cut to present day(2008) NYC and a grown up Jane, where she's a bridesmaid at two weddings in the same night. She gets knocked out at the first wedding from some rather... enthusiastic guests wanting to catch the bouquet. She comes to with the face of a guy named Kevin Doyle (James Marsden) over her, who managed to catch a glimpse of her changing in the taxi as she left for the second wedding. Yep. Wedding switching. If a sitcom episode of that does not already exist, someone needs to make it exist. Jane's a little unsteady after getting tackled over flowers, so they share the cab home. But she leaves her planner behind, and Kevin, out of curiosity, finds out that she's got a lot of weddings where she's a bridesmaid in her schedule. This intrigues him, as he covers weddings for the New York Journal, despite being quite the cynic.
Soon after, Jane's little sis, the rather vain and spoiled Tess (Malin Akerman), comes home for a visit. And then she meets Jane's boss, George, whom Jane is pining for. And Tess falls for him, despite them having nothing in common. Tess starts totally fabricating stuff about herself in an effort to keep him interested. Naturally, Jane is mortified. To add to the stress, Kevin is using Jane's planner to follow her and hound her for a date. This is implied to not be at all creepy when we find out his ulterior motive is to write a piece on her and her constant bridesmaid activities in order to further his career.
After an alarmingly short courtship, George proposes to Tess (with Jane present, no less). Tess dumps all the planning duties on Jane and suprise! The wedding will be in three weeks! Naturally, Jane's emotional health rapidly declines, while Tess becomes a total bridezilla. And then she learns that Kevin is a wedding reporter, though not about the article. He figures out that Jane loves George and gives her advice about standing up for herself. As they continue to interact, he realizes that there is more to Jane than just being a bridesmaid. And that the article he's written is less than flattering. He asks his editor to hold the story, but she goes back on her word because apparently Hollywood forgot that journalistic ethics and libel exist.
While running an errand, they get stuck overnight in the sticks thanks to a combo of high emotions and hydroplaning. After a couple drinks in the local bar and some misheard and badly sung lyrics, they realize that they are falling for each other and act upon it. But come breakfast time, Jane sees the article. She leaves him, furious at being manipulated.
And then, the breaking point. Jane finds out that Tess has cut up their mother's wedding dress to make it look more modern. The dress that Jane had planned to wear at her own wedding. She threatens to tell George about Tess's lies is Tess doesn't do it herself. She gives her until the rehearsal dinner, and when Tess refuses, Jane humiliates her sister with a slideshow that shows the real Tess instead of the lies she told George. Naturally, no more wedding. And yet, Jane feels terrible, as her best friend points out.
Finally, dear old Dad is all "You two are not leaving this room until you work out your differences." Jane realizes that she cares so much for other people that she basically ignores herself, while Tess realizes she needs to start being less self-absorbed and more selfless if she wants a guy like George in her life.
That evening, George invites Jane to a charity event because he needs a date. When they meet at the office, she confesses her love to him. They kiss and it's... meh. No chemistry at all. Turns out Jane's much more in love with Kevin. So, she goes to his office, and then the wedding he's covering to confess her love to him. They kiss and it's magic.
Cut to one year later. Kevin and Jane's beach wedding is underway. And on a very long boardwalk, are Tess as maid of honor, and the brides from all the weddings she's been bridesmaid at as her bridesmaids, each wearing the bridesmaid dress that Jane wore at their wedding as their dress. All twenty-seven of them.
Despite not being a big rom-com fan, I really enjoyed this movie. My favorite scene was Jane modeling all of her bridesmaid dresses for Kevin at her place. And boy do they run the gamut of bridesmaid attire. There's the sari from wedding number two of the night Kevin and Jane met (my personal fave, as the wedding itself was a Hindu/Jewish affair). There's a bathing suit from an underwater wedding, one from a cowboy themed wedding, one from a Gone with the Wind themed wedding, a kimono, and a teal number with black gloves that can only be described as "ugly bridesmaid dress classic." There was even a tuxedo from a wedding where the ladies wore tuxes and the men wore dresses. Which means that she only had twenty-six dresses, but that's splitting hairs.
I like the bits of backstory we get about our three leads. For example, Jane and Tess's mom died when they were little, and their Dad took it really hard. The reason for Kevin's cynicism about weddings stems from planning one of his own, then having the girl leave him for his roommate. And Tess only came home from overseas because her boyfriend dumped her and she got fired.
While we are on Tess, I also like how much growth we see out of her. At the end, George comes to Jane and Kevin's wedding, where Tess greets him and almost overshares about her real personality and current circumstances. And it looks like it's difficult for her to say, but she does it anyway. I like that. People don't automatically change overnight, and it looks like Tess took that intervening year to really look at herself and change the less nice parts of her personality while still being authentic.
Like I said, not a big rom-com watcher here, but I usually enjoy the ones I do watch. This is no exception. Sure, it's ultimately lightweight fluff, but what's wrong with that? After all, it's Valentine's day.