READ MORE: Always a Bridesmaid...

PREMIERE'S REVIEW (posted 1/17/08)

Guys who caught their girlfriends rolling their eyes when Bruce Willis jumped onto the wing of a moving jet in Live Free or Die Hard will now have an opportunity to do some eye-rolling of their own. 27 Dresses is a chick-flick on a sugar high, so giggly-bouncy and nostalgic for the fantasy-girlhood of its audience that the DVD, which should follow relatively quickly, should come packaged in big pink bows and include a coupon for a free pony ride. Although occasionally worth a smile and stuffed with lively "Julia Roberts-singing-Motown-into-a-hairbrush"-style interludes, such as a botched-lyrics karaoke jam of Benny and the Jets, the film is low on genuine laughs born of clever scripting or easy chemistry. Overall, it's about as cinematically nutritious as a slice of week-old wedding cake.

Heigl plays Jane, a saintly office drone who turns backflips for her boss and secret crush, George (Ed Burns), doing things like wrapping gifts for him "badly" so the recipients will think he wrapped them himself. Her personal life, meanwhile, is devoted to feeding one addiction: she helps plan and coordinate the weddings of her many friends of questionable taste, all of whom throw money at budget-busters like a scuba-mask ceremony held underwater and a Gone With the Wind–themed wedding with a row of bridesmaid-Scarletts. The film never explains why Jane doesn't pursue wedding planning as a career, but it's clearly her all-consuming passion; early on we see her on a wild bender, hopping back and forth between two big weddings in a single night. A time-crunch even forces her to strip in the back of a cab and she deducts from the cabbie's fare for peeking.

It's not only Jane's boss and friends who feed her need to be the world's most under-appreciated person; she's also an ugly duckling (uh huh) sister to Tess, a man-swiping stunner played by Swedish-born Malin Akerman (soon to be seen as superbabe Silk Spectre in Watchmen). Immediately after Tess breezes into town, she hooks her talons into George — "My George" Jane blurts out in a hand-over-mouth moment — leaving the good sister in mortal danger of becoming a bridesmaid for life. A wet-fireworks display of sisterly feuding then follows, with director Anne Fletcher (Step Up) putting zero effort into giving the flyweight squabbles any dramatic heft or a semblance of realism. This flaw carries over and becomes doubly annoying when Jane meets Potential True Love No. 2, a metrosexual newspaperman named Kevin (James Marsden) who looks like James Marsden and covers the wedding beat, and dismisses him out-of-hand for being "too cynical." Uh-huh.

The film is no better at hiding its seams than it is at hiding its purpose, which is to create for Katherine Heigl a fem-fanbase that doesn't naturally cotton to male-skewed laughers like Knocked Up. Even romcom-superstars in the making need their movie projects to be properly tailored to their strengths, though, and Heigl radiates too many brainwaves to sell the outlandish contrivances on display in this one. In particular, there's a third-act "revenge" taken by Jane against someone who wrongs her that is so crazy-over-the-top it should never have made it off the page — it actually makes her character seem unhinged instead of just angry and upset. 27 Dresses is sure to elicit different responses from fair-minded critics, as some will tumble for Heigl's megawatt-voodoo more than others, but if this film is a quality indicator of the kind of vehicles she hopes to create going forward, then Julia Roberts need not hand over her title-belt just yet.

— Ryan Stewart