At their worst, romantic comedies display an utter contempt for their target demographic, assuming that any woman seeking out a rom-com isn’t particularly interested in genuine wit or insight — it’s essentially porn for the girly set. (A similar argument can be made for the action genre, mind you, with the genders switched.) 27 Dresses, while still following the conventions of genre, nonetheless never feels like it’s pandering or condescending to its audience.
Katherine Heigl plays Jane, a woman obsessed with the idea of marriage despite living out the cliché of “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” — she’s got all 27 bridesmaid dresses to prove it. She is, of course, secretly in love with her boss, the cool-but-bland George (Edward Burns), but when her superficial younger sister Tess (Malin Akerman) arrives and cluelessly snaps him up in a whirlwind romance, Jane is inevitably called upon to plan their wedding.
Meanwhile, James Marsden is Kevin, a cynical journalist stuck writing for the sappy “Commitments” column in the New York Journal, and he sees writing a biting piece on Jane (the archetypal “lonely bridesmaid”) as being his ticket to gaining legitimacy. Ostensibly following Tess and George’s wedding, Kevin gradually gains Jane’s trust despite them both being philosophically at odds when it comes to the ethics of the so-called “wedding industry”.
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