I am a single male. I have been single for quite sometime, while there are quite a few downs to this there is an upside. I have avoided the deadly bullet known as “chick flick” in which sometimes Males are forced to watch these borefests to men. So here I am now reviewing 27 Dresses, a “chick flick” from the looks of it. From the opening scene and the way it has been playing out I almost wonder to myself, is this a female version of Wedding Crashers perhaps?, In fact by the first ten minutes it looks very similar to Wedding Crashers with a barrage of various Weddings the lead character Jane (Katherine Heigl) is seen partaking in.

After a long night of wedding it up, it’s the next day and its work time. After some chit chat and a little work, at the end of the day everyone is invited to a co-workers engagement party which happens to take place at a Goth club. As the Co-workers and Jane arrive, they stick out like a sore bleeding thumb in an all white background. Often times when you watch a movie it is an escape from reality, so when you see some one from your reality in a movie that you know, it’s always a big W.T.F.? As I notice some one that I had once worked with at a big music festival called Convergence 13 who was clearly seen dancing in the background as they were talking. I have to give kudos to the fact the people in charge of the film had the appropriate music playing during the club scene with bands like Gene Loves Jezebel and Cocteau Twins instead of going with something god-awful and trendy like My Chemical Romance.

The club scene leads to a turning point in the movie as Jane’s love interest George (Edward Burns) and her younger sister Tess (Malin Akerman) engage in the attraction magnet and hit it off instantly, as a mortified Jane introduces the two. Off they go for a drink and Jane scampers off like a wounded animal.

A sad attempt at comic relief comes in an unwelcome way when Jane exits out the door of the Goth club to vent her frustration with what just occurred by bellowing a loud and long obscenity, as her foul mouth tirade comes to an end she finds herself in what looks like a happy 50^th anniversary party. Now working in night clubs myself and seeing how packed the club was my assumption would be that this took place around eleven or midnight, so my question is who has a Happy 50^th anniversary party at those kind of hours?

After a few dates Tess and George become engaged and a columnist Kevin Doyle (James Marsden) offers to write a column on their wedding. The relationships between Jane, Tess, George, and now Kevin who is constantly clashing with Jane due to his distaste for the wedding industry, all intertwine because of this article Kevin is writing about the soon to be wed couple, which secretly is really all about Jane and how he feels she is the poster child for what is wrong with the wedding industry today.

A little before the story goes to print Kevin and Jane actually become close and even romantic up until the point some one freaks out when they see their face smack dab on the front page of a newspaper section. All hell breaks lose which causes Jane to change and stop trying to please every one. Towards the end she dishes out some homemade revenge to make up for years of pent up feelings which tears apart a relationship and causes many awkward moments at a special dinner.

The movie could have ended in a somber un-generic way that actually would have been deemed decent in my eyes and made the movie a little more enjoyable, but instead the Hollywood happy ending fairy had to come along and wave the magic wand and make EVERY ONE live happily ever after with all slates wiped clean and Jane wearing her 28^th wedding dress to her very own wedding.

Special features for the film consist of a few different short documentaries which talk about the cast and most importantly the dresses and how they selected some of the ugliest dresses ever along with a wide array of colors to have 27 of the most diverse dresses they could assemble for the movie. If you really care enough about weddings they even give you a documentary titled “Running of the brides” which shows you a huge store having a late night blow out sale on wedding dresses with Brides to be lined up like the Nintendo Wii or a Harry Potter book was just being released. As soon as those doors open they rush in like bulls trying to score these dresses for around $249 which originally were marked at $5,000.

27 Dresses was a bullet I could not dodge. This was not a fatal wound, but at times this movie could be a little painful due to how generic and by the book it could be, a few redeeming moments make the movie tolerable. At least I can’t come up with 27 reasons not to watch this.

-derek-