27 Dresses

I'm currently stateside as of last Friday thanks to a wedding and a graduation only a week apart. In honor of the wedding, and the 9 hour flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis I decided to watch 27 Dresses.

Let me start by saying I refuse to see Knocked Up. I don't have anything against anyone involved with the film (except for Heigel but more on that later) but the whole idea of the film just offended me. This woman, with a blossoming career, sleeps with a stoner (and not a productive stoner as that is possible but a loser stoner), winds up pregnant, and decides to try to have a relationship with this man-child. When the local KC radio DJs are bitching about how stupid this woman is, you really have to take note. It's one thing to decide to let the man be involved with his spawn. That's fine. But to force yourself into a relationship because of old ideals that every child has to have a mother and father together is just silly. Why can't a woman raise a child on her own? That's one of the few parts I actually liked in Juno, that Jennifer Gardner's character decided she didn't need her husband to raise the child--that she could do it herself.

Anyway, loser guys getting awesome chicks just annoys me (see Superbad as well). The next thing is Katherine Heigel saying AFTER the movie is a big hit that "yeah it's kind of sexist" (not a direct quote there) and that the portrayal of her character is horrible etc when only a few months before she was saying how AWESOME the movie was and how great the characters, script, etc were. It wasn't until people said it was setting women back 5 decades that she changed her mind. I'm NOT a fan of hypocrites. Especially those who cave to peer pressure so easily.

So come this spring, 27 Dresses comes out and I boycott it as well. It looks just as horrible: a woman in love with her boss who falls for her younger sister, yet James Marsden comes in and finally wins her over. Boring, predictable clichés + Katherine Heigel, who was still on my shit list from Knocked Up = another boycott.

I was doing a great job until the 9 hour plane ride. I had a choice of a bunch of movies, I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (I'll talk about this more later), The Emperor's New Groove, and was starting Juno when I decided I really didn't want to see it again. It's not a bad movie, but one viewing of an overly zealous hipster film was enough for me. So I decided to put on 27 dresses and if I fell asleep kudos to me! Well, I didn't fall asleep, instead I watched the whole thing, and it was worse than I thought!

I love weddings, I really do, I love being in them, I love getting dressed up, I love dancing, I love champagne. I can understand why a woman would want to be in 27 weddings. I already have been involved as a bridesmaid three times, a flower girl once, in charge of the guest book once and been invited to plenty others. I'm all for that, but this woman devotes her every waking minute to it. A bit pathetic and not only that, but she keeps clippings from the wedding section of the newspaper. Whatever, to each their own, but the fact that she lives through other people's weddings while pining over her boss is just down right sad and archaic. All this woman thinks about is her dream wedding and that her life won't be complete until then, yet she's passively waiting for the man to get the ball rolling. I mean, if you love weddings and want them to be so awesome why don't you become a wedding planner? At least make a career out of it instead of a hobby.

On top of this, her actual "friends" consist of her alcoholic, slutty co-worker, the goth office secretary, and her sister who lies about everything from her love to animals and vegetarianism to the fact that she hires his "little brother" to be her maid. Supposedly, these 27 married women are her friends too, but does she ever actually interact with them? No. Okay, the movie starts with her attending two weddings on the same evening at the same time so she does talk to those women briefly in the opening sequence, but after that we don't see any of these women until her wedding at the end (OH COME ON!!! You KNEW she had to get hitched at the end).

Back to my point, all the women in this film are disgusting. Either they lie and hide their real selves in order to secure a man, they'll drunkenly sleep with anyone, or they are obsessed with planning their perfect wedding even when she doesn't have a significant other in her life. Wow, so realistic all of them! What are we in the 1950s?

If the women in the film weren't bad enough, let me point out how nearly every single scene is a rip off of other movies. For example, the "Benny and the Jets" bar scene reminds me of Runaway Bride when Richard Gere and Julia Roberts begin to fall in love and they're in a bar and then hopping over wood fences or whatever. Anyway, it's fun playing what-movie-is-this-scene-from? Honestly, makes the overall film see a bit more surprising.

I can't even try to rate anything this unoriginal. I would say maybe a D+ if we were going by that rating system. There are a few funny moments, the horrible bridesmaid dresses are pretty awesome, and James Marsden is just too damn cute in everything with a gorgeous singing voice to boot that makes up for his predictable character.

Overall, I think Katherine Heigel should really stick to the small screen. At least on Grey's she has some balls and an interesting character. I've enjoyed her since the Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM for those in the know) Wish Upon a Star and honestly would love to see her in more movies, but I just wish she would find scripts that weren't written 40 years ago!