27 Dresses

27 Dresses is a 2008 American romantic comedy film directed by Anne Fletcher and written by Aline Brosh McKenna. The film stars Katherine Heigl and James Marsden. The film was released January 10, 2008 in Australia and opened in the United States on January 18.

27 Dresses
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAnne Fletcher
Produced byGary Barber
Roger Birnbaum
Jonathan Glickman
Written byAline Brosh McKenna
StarringKatherine Heigl
James Marsden
Malin Åkerman
Judy Greer
Edward Burns
Music byRandy Edelman
CinematographyPeter James
Edited byPriscilla Nedd-Friendly
Production
company
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release date
  • January 10, 2008 (2008-01-10) (Australia)
  • January 18, 2008 (2008-01-18) (United States)
Running time
111 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$30 million
Box office$162.7 million[1]

Plot

Jane Nichols (Katherine Heigl) has been a bridesmaid for 27 weddings. One night when she is attending two weddings almost simultaneously, she meets Kevin Doyle (James Marsden), who helps her get home but discusses with her his cynical views of marriage. He finds her day planner in the cab they shared. Meanwhile, Jane's sister Tess (Malin Åkerman) arrives from Europe and falls in love with Jane's boss George (Edward Burns) at first sight. Tess pretends to like the same things that George does to get him to like her. Despite being in love with George herself, Jane does not reveal the truth and her sister's courtship progresses rapidly. Soon the new couple announce that they intend to marry in three weeks and Jane becomes the wedding planner.

The reporter who agrees to post their wedding turns out to be Kevin, who writes wedding announcements under the name Malcolm Doyle. After looking at the contents of Jane's planner, he decides to use the contents as material for a piece on the "perpetual bridesmaid" and hopefully be promoted to writing investigative pieces about the real news.

Jane is unaware of Kevin's intentions. When he asks to interview her for his column on Tess, he gets her to try on all 27 bridesmaids dresses in her closet. He takes pictures of her in all of them and sends them with the completed article to his boss. As they get to know each other, Kevin begins to think that Jane is not as one-dimensional as he thought and asks his editor to hold his article so he can "fix" it.

When Kevin finds out that Jane is getting her sister's marriage fixed with the man she loves, he rebukes her. Jane agrees to one drink with Kevin and ends up getting drunk. That has both of them kiss and have sex in the car. The next morning, the two go to a diner and a waitress recognizes Jane. Kevin's editor ran the article on the front page of the 'Commitments' section, despite Kevin and her settling to hold it for a while. When Jane finds out about it, she feels betrayed and is furious at him. Tess then gets angry at Jane for giving Kevin material about her, whom he describes as a bridezilla. The fight escalates when Jane sees that Tess altered their late mother's wedding dress to her own style — the last straw on Tess' string of lies to George and demands on Jane.

Despite the fight, Tess asks Jane to make a slideshow for her engagement party. Jane decides that George should know the truth about Tess. She shows pictures of Tess with other men, eating ribs (as she claimed that she is a vegetarian, like George), holding a cat by the tail, and recoiling from George's dog (she told him that she loves dogs, but actually hates them) — in short, doing all the things she had told George that she never did. After that, Pedro (David Castro), the child George mentors, reveals to the crowd that Tess had actually have him clean George's apartment for money. All of this humiliating truth to her seem irrational, and so George breaks off the engagement to the wedding. Jane's friend, Casey (Judy Greer), points out that telling the truth to George and breaking their engagement at the party didn't help the situation, and that it would have been better if she had been upfront with him in the beginning. The next day, Jane meets Tess to apologize. She is still mad with Jane, as Tess believes that Jane resented her throughout the years. Tess reveals that the reason she stayed in New York was because she got fired from her job and her boyfriend dumped her; she explains that when she met George she'd tried to be like Jane since she fell in love with him. Tess also encourages Jane to focus on her life and her own needs, rather than becoming a pushover for all of her friends by bending over backwards for their every desire.

Later at work, George tells Jane that he appreciates her because she never says no. Remembering that Kevin once said the same thing as a criticism, Jane quits and admits she only stayed at the job because she was in love with George. She discovers after two experimental kisses that she no longer loves him and goes to meet Kevin. She announces in front of a crowd at a wedding he is covering that she is in love with him.

One year later Jane and Kevin are getting married. George and Tess meet again and a hope for a second chance shows. All 27 brides whom Jane helped, as well as Tess and Casey, are her bridesmaids, wearing the dresses she once wore as their bridesmaid.

Cast

Production

Principal photography began on May 10, 2007. The film was primarily shot in the state of Rhode Island. Locations included Rosecliff and Marble House mansions, a beach in Charlestown, East Greenwich, and Providence. Filming also took place during two weeks in New York City.[2]

Release
Katherine Heigl at the film's premiere in Westwood

Box office

The film opened at #2 at the North American box office, making US$23 million in its opening weekend behind Cloverfield. 27 Dresses grossed $76.8 million in North America, and $85.8 million overseas, for a total worldwide gross of $162.6 million.[3]

According to BoxOfficeGuru.com, "The audience for the $30M-budgeted 27 Dresses was overwhelmingly female. Studio research showed that 75% of the crowd consisted of women, but the audience was evenly split between persons over and under 25."[4]

Critical response

27 Dresses was not well received by most critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that only 40% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 151 reviews, with an average rating of 4.99/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The filmmakers perfectly follow the well-worn romantic comedy formula, rendering 27 Dresses clichéd and mostly forgettable."[5] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 47 out of 100, based on 31 reviews.[6]

Cath Clarke of The Guardian said that despite Heigl's "knack for light comedy, and an easy good grace," she felt the script "fails to find satire on the can't-miss territory of the Manhattan wedding circuit", saying "What a maddening waste of Katherine Heigl this insipid romantic comedy is."[7] Peter Howell from the Toronto Star said the film "shamelessly trades in the hoariest of chick-flick clichés" and criticized screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna for filling the script with "cheap gags" instead of the "savage wit and genuine insight into the shallowness of modern life" she had in The Devil Wears Prada.[8]

Home media

The Blu-ray Disc and DVD was released on April 29, 2008 in the United States and July 29 in the United Kingdom.

Soundtrack

The film features a score written by Randy Edelman along with numerous songs from other artists. These songs do not appear on the soundtrack CD, which includes only the Edelman score.

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References
  1. 27 Dresses (2008). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2020-06-07.
  2. "Film > 27 Dresses – Production Notes". Kheigl.com. Retrieved August 16, 2013.
  3. "27 Dresses". Box Office Mojo. Amazon.com.
  4. Gitesh Pandya. "Weekend Box Office (January 18 - 21, 2008)".
  5. "27 Dresses - Movie Reviews, Trailers, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 17 January 2008. Retrieved April 6, 2019.
  6. "27 Dresses (2008): Reviews". Metacritic. CBS. Archived from the original on 18 January 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  7. Clarke, Cath (March 28, 2008). "27 Dresses". The Guardian. London: Guardian Media Group. Retrieved April 16, 2018.
  8. Howell, Peter (January 18, 2008). "'27 Dresses': Comedy left at the altar". Toronto Star. Torstar Media Group. Retrieved April 16, 2018.
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