Katherine Hiegl is a likeable enough actress. She got her big break in 1994’s My Father the Hero, which had the exceptionally gross premise of having an adolescent’s father posing as her European lover to score the guy she’s really got her eyes on. The most memorable moment of the movie was a 15-year-old Heigl strutting around in a thong bathing suit. Her resume got better with a steady stream of network TV shows like Roswell and Grey’s Anatomy, and then she broke into another level of stardom thanks to the runaway success of [I]Knocked Up[/I] where she carried Seth Rogen’s baby. Then she told Vanity Fair that she felt Knocked Up was “sexist” and that the women were portrayed as shrews and that the men were fun-loving dudes (I must have seen a somewhat different movie). She’s entitled to her opinion, but what seems very odd is that Heigl’s follow-up to her breakout role is 27 Dresses, a romantic comedy about a woman who is a perennial bridesmaid and yearns for her own perfect wedding when her life will be complete.

Jane (Heigl) busies her time helping others to have heir ideal weddings. She has contributed to so many wedding ceremonies that she has amassed a closet full of 27 bridesmaid dresses that serve as trophies. Jane is in love with weddings. She is also harboring a crush on her boss (Edward Burns, wooden as always) that seems to be going nowhere. Jane’s younger sister Tess (Malin Akerman) comes to visit and immediately hooks up with Jane’s boss/crush. Jane’s wisecracking best friend (Judy Greer) is quick with a quip and declares Tess to be some very negative terms. Poor plain Jane is also taken aback when she meets wedding columnist, Kevin (James Marsden), whose fawning words about weddings are like poetry for Jane. He turns out to be a cynical guy who feels weddings and marriages are “the last legal form of slavery.” When Tess gets engaged to the boss man, wedding responsibilities fall upon Jane and Kevin is right beside her, ready to trade barbs about romance and perhaps start one of his own.

27 Dresses hews pretty close to the familiar romantic comedy formula trappings. Opposites attract, bickering will lead to romance, and then true love will overcome all misunderstandings, that’s a given. Another given is the fact that we will get a montage of Heigl trying on all 27 titular dresses. 27 Dresses also includes the wisecracking best friend who has no purpose of her own but to comment on the troubles of our heroine with stark bluntness. Once again, this is the type of film where one character has some earlier, negative opinion or statement that resurfaces late to bite them in the ass after they have learned how flawed and shallow that original opinion was (otherwise known as the 11th hour misunderstanding). One party has a personal epiphany and runs to catch the other party leaving by some means of transportation (I’ve seen boats, taxis, motorcycles, barges, but usually they run to catch a plane). And then there’s the sing-a-long; oh what romantic comedy would be worth its salt if it didn’t include a group sing-a-long to some older tune that just united everyone in spontaneous song? 27 Dresses uses Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets” to rock out a beer bar. Really, “Benny and the Jets”? Rocking out a bar? And it’s not even a gay bar? Hmm. 27 Dresses is rather predictable from the first frame onward, but familiarity isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker for a strictly genre movie.

I’ve seen plenty of romantic comedies and I like to judge them fairly, so I use my patented cute-to-cringe count whereby I take stock of the number of times I smile, laugh, or find a moment, line of dialogue, or even choice of song that leaves a favorable impression. I then compare this figure with the number of times I want to roll my eyes, check my watch (if I had one), vomit, or any piece of dialogue or moment that feels so saccharine, so unbelievable even in the rom-com universe that I want to laugh derisively. The final tally for 27 Dresses was somewhere in the middle but I’ll admit it skewed closer to the positive “cute” side of the spectrum.

The acting overall really helps to make the most of the formulaic material. Heigl seems destined to thrive in the rom-com genre; she has an every girl appeal and seems apt making funny faces of seething indignation (take note of the amount of times she uses food in her mouth for comic effect). She seems like the heir apparent to Sandra Bullock movies. Her chemistry with Marsden is ripe and they bring out good thing in one another with their playful give-and-take. Marsden has a terrific smile (seriously, the man might have the best choppers in the industry) and is suitably dreamy but he also has an enjoyably droll delivery. Akerman plays a spoiled brat well, though she isn’t given the opportunities to flash her rather skillful comic skills that she displayed in The Heartbreak Kid remake. Greer is a top-notch scene-stealer and deserves her character deserves her own movie. She has the most fun role to play but Greer sinks her teeth into the character and delivers a juicy performance that feels slightly naughty, uncensored, and carefree.

The movie falters when it trips up in maintaining believability. There’s an extensive scene in a Goth bar/club where the costumed extras are acting like… costumed extras. It’s the least believable Goth club I have ever seen in a movie, not that I was expecting Hollywood fluff to pain an accurate picture. It’s just wall-to-wall stereotypes, but not only that, they’re distracting and lame and dated stereotypes. Then Jane marches outside to scream to the heavens an expletive-filled rant about her bad luck when, ut oh, right next door to the Goth club is an old couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. What? Grandma and grandpa Old People celebrating their marriage vows next door to a Goth club? This incongruous setting takes a long, long while to set up one very blah joke that could have functioned anywhere. Realistically, the joke is that Jane is swearing unbeknownst to others, so why even have it next to the world’s crummiest Goth club? If you’re going that route, why not have grandma and grandpa Old People dressed in tacky Goth apparel as well? This may become my most nit-picky criticism of all of 2008 but it really stuck in my craw.

A better example is how the film handles Jane’s bratty sister, Tess. For 90 minutes we bare witness to Tess being a thoughtless, self-absorbed, lying, horrible human specimen, and then the movie tries to change strides. In the very end, it wants us to open up and look at Tess’ life and realize that she doesn’t have it so awesome because she was fired and dumped. Oh my, that must be perfectly excusable then for her rampant inexcusable, me-first behavior. If 27 Dresses has an antagonist in its midst than Tess is that bridezilla. The movie plays her bitchiness for comedy but then wants an audience to forget every whine and betrayal because, woe is her life, Tess wants to be happy. Tess remains an unsympathetic twit from beginning to end, no matter how hard the movie and its soft piano score try to change your mind.

The fact that 27 Dresses thought it could throw in some contradictory evidence at the last minute to make an audience forgive Tess is very telling. It showcases that the film has a hard time grasping the realities of characterization; Kevin is cynical about weddings because he was stood up at his; Jane must focus on making others happy because she is afraid of focusing on her self; Ed Burns is a douche. That isn’t necessarily an indictment on the film per se, just my honest opinion. 27 Dresses spells everything out in bold statements that hit like anvils, like when Kevin’s news editor congratulates him on his front-age story ridiculing Jane: “Hey, you got what you wanted, right?” Gag. The movie is too lockstep with the genre’s clichés that it doesn’t push hard enough with its characters, so we get plenty of intermittently cute moments but cute moments that will be easily forgotten and stored away like one of Jane’s hideous bridesmaids gowns.

27 Dresses is more or less par for the course in a genre littered with sappy clichés and cookie-cutter characterizations, and yet the movie possesses enough charm to outdistance its lapses in believability. The acting ensemble help make the movie enjoyable in parts, especially the chemistry between Heigl and Marsden. 27 Dresses passes the time but you wish that Heigl, Marsden, and especially Greer would be teleported to a better movie. One free from bitchy younger sisters, bar sing-a-longs, giddy dress-up montages, and Ed Burns. Did I mention that his character is a douche?

Nate’s Grade: C+