As one can guess, the 27 dresses the protagonist wears are as a bridesmaid and the 28th will be as the….  As far as romantic comedies go, 27 DRESSES is bound to comply to certain rules like happy endings with the usual obstacles.  This implies predictability and unavoidable clichés in its story-telling, but 27 DRESSES comes up one on top in the romantic comedy genre.

At the film’s start (in an overlong and not than amusing as it seems sequence), the audience sees Jane (Katherine Heigl) as the perfect bridesmaid juggling two weddings at the same time.  She meets a wedding writer, Kevin (James Marsden) who picks up the organizer she leaves behind.  This leads him to write the story that his editor publishes sans permission and hence the romance obstacle.  The story then revolves around Jane in love with her boss, George (Edward Burns) only to witness him falling for her baby sister, Tess (Malin Akerman).  With this story laid out, the audience is fully aware of what will transpire, step by step.  But as the saying goes, it is not how funny the joke is but how the comedian tells.  27 DRESSES is a reasonably living happily ever after told tale.

Aline Brosh McKenna’s (THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA) script could have done better.  Her DEVIL WEARS PRADA had fantastic supporting roles in the form of the fashion guru played by Stanley Tucci and the mean boss played by Meryl Streep.  In 27 DRESSES the supporting roles of the bride and groom’s best friends are under written, their roles just to provide advice and a few laughs.  The comedy is played down several notches as well.  But McKenna is good at writing clever set-pieces, the best being the opening introductory sequence in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA.  The best (and most important) scene in 27 DRESSES where the drunken Jane and Tess fall for each other amidst crooning Elton John’s “Benny and the Jets” is well orchestrated.  McKenna has the ability to write parts in which actors have a good time doing them.  Though the film begins with the sappy voiceover of Jane saying she enjoys helping someone on the happiest day of their life, director Anne Fletcher (STEP UP) keeps the sappiness factor down.

In one part of the film, Jane comments on an adventure tour spread that everyone and everything looks too perfect and too staged.  That could be said too of 27 DRESSES in that the best parts are the riskier bits like the ones where Jane unknowingly shouts out foul words at a 50th Anniversary party or gets slapped in the face.  The one offensive bit where short Japanese women are used to evoke laughs seems to imply that Fletcher will go to any length to entertain.

Though 27 DRESSES takes a while to get its footing, Fletcher moves her film fast and effective like a well planned wedding.  The film ultimately succeeds with enough highs to discount the lows aided by the fact that Heigl and Marsden make a perfectly believable screen couple.