27 Dresses

Love is patient, love is kind, love means slowly losing your mind.

Always, always, always a bridesmaid!

27 Dresses from 2008 is a rom com, but who doesn’t need a rom com now and then? As a rom com, it follows a formula, so you know they get together at the end. Nevertheless, here’s the obligatory spoiler warning, because movies are hard for me to review without mentioning parts of the plot.

Quick summary: ever since she was a little girl, Jane has been helping friends and family with weddings, to the point that her closet in a NYC apartment is stuffed with bridesmaid dresses. What’s stopping her from being a bride herself? For years she has been in love with George, her boss, something that everyone knows – except George, who shows no sign of returning it. Jane is a romantic; when the Sunday paper arrives, she turns immediately to the Commitments section, where she indulges in articles by her favorite columnist, Malcolm Doyle, who writes moving masterpieces about weddings.

Malcolm’s real name is Kevin – he uses Malcolm in his byline for privacy – and as he writes about weddings, he attends many. He works out that Jane is at two weddings on the same Saturday night. When she gets knocked to the floor during the bouquet scrum, he comes to her rescue. As she’s still wobbly, he helps her to a cab. After talking to Jane (and finding her Filofax) he gets an idea for an article about the prototypical bridesmaid, hoping the feature will liberate him from the taffeta ghetto. To do this, he pursues Jane, but because of her unrequited love, she’s not receptive. Kevin’s quest gets assisted by the arrival of Jane’s younger sister, Tess, to whom George proposes. Upset, Jane finally meets Kevin for a drink. Offering to write a piece on George and Tess, Kevin now has a reason to spend more time with Jane.

Kevin may seem stalkerish with respect to Jane, but he justifies it to himself because he’s trying to get a story. He is in-your-face persistent, sending flowers, scrawling his name on every Saturday night in her appointment book, calling, and showing up at places where he knows she’ll be. It’s so much that it might seem creepy – but it’s also so over-the-top that it isn’t. Of course, we see he’s taken with Jane from the start (his editor notices, too).

In some respects, George is a better person than Kevin. But Kevin sees Jane, really sees her, from the beginning, while George has barely noticed her except as an employee. Kevin helps Jane stand up for herself, while Jane challenges Kevin’s cynical attitude toward love and marriage.

Kevin has written his article about Jane, which, to his surprise, his editor wants. He tracks Jane down so he can warn her, but he’s taken aback when he observes her at a restaurant with George. Kevin realizes Jane's in love with her boss (George still hasn’t noticed). Hurt, Kevin turns to leave, but George spots him and calls him over. Kevin recovers his equilibrium and manages to pry Jane away from George – partly for himself, but also for Jane, because George is not in love with her. Kevin now understands why Jane has been so upset about this wedding – they fight about it in the car. She’s so upset that she drives badly and they hydroplane. No one is hurt, but the car goes off the road and they get stuck in the mud.

The scenes in the bar, and especially Bennie and the Jets, were terrific. The alcohol gets them both to open up to each other and they kiss. And, in case you wonder if they had sex in the car, the answer is yes. First, Jane keeps saying she never does this, and later she tells her aunt that as she’s still single, she gets to have hot hate sex with random strangers. At least she thought it was hot!

Jane and Kevin share the same favorite moment in a wedding: when the groom first sees the bride coming down the aisle. Even though the wedding is supposed to be her day, the look on the groom’s face is what counts for them. Weirdly, I had the same reaction to the movie. Even though more focus was on Jane, I found Kevin’s character arc more interesting. Both Heigl and Marsden were good, but either because he had an agenda, or because the writers – wanting to make another writer look good – gave him excellent dialogue, I was more interested in Kevin.

The movie dots its i’s and crosses its t’s, with many truths coming out, especially from Jane, but also from Tess and Kevin. Of course, Kevin and Jane get together, but not until after Jane and George try a kiss and discover there’s no there there.

Are any parts sub par? A few. I thought Jane’s speeches were over the top. Not just the slide show – which was really revenge for Tess cutting up their mother’s wedding dress – but the bit at the end where she gets up on a stage and tells Kevin that she is falling in love with him. That seems unnecessarily public, although it makes fun film. And of course, given the subject, they had to end with a wedding, but for me that was the least interesting part.

Bits and pieces

I usually comment on the title, but this movie’s title is straightforward with no hidden meanings.

One reason I watched this movie was because it was mentioned in Brooklyn-Nine-Nine. I expect they chose 27 Dresses because when Jane is the maid of honor in two weddings in one night, the taxi keeps crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.

This movie was more logical than many other rom coms I have watched, but I felt as if there were extra Saturdays and Sundays and not enough weekdays. Well, Kevin did rip a week out of Jane’s Filofax; maybe that distorted time.

Jane calls Kevin creepy in their first phone call, but at that point he backs off and waits for her to call him. Funnily, though, when he comes out as Malcolm, Tess tells him that Jane is obsessed by his columns, but "not in a creepy way."

I also thought the phrase was “electric boobs” in Bennie and the Jets.

Shagging flies (an expression I did not know) means catching or retrieving the fly balls in practice.

It is always a terrible idea to start an emotional subject with a driver in a car. The idea is twice as terrible in bad weather.

Quotes

Jane: I don't know why I'm arguing this with a perfect stranger. But, yes, marriage, like everything good and important, isn't easy. Cynicism, on the other hand, always is.

Jane: You got them champagne glasses and a bottle of Cristal.
George: Any way she's actually gonna believe it actually came from me?
Jane: Maybe. Wrapped it like a car ran over it.
George: Nice touch.

Casey: He asks if you want a drink. You smile and say, 'Vodka soda.' If you already have a drink, you down it. Then there's some flirting, some interoffice sex, an accidental pregnancy, a shotgun wedding, and a life of bliss. How many times do we have to go over this?

Jane: You write the most beautiful things. Do you actually believe in love and marriage and just pretend to be a cynic, or are you actually a cynic who knows how to spin romantic crap for girls like me?
Kevin: I didn't follow that at all, but I think the second one, the spinning crap one.
Jane: Oh, my God. I feel like I found out my favorite love song was written about a sandwich.

Kevin. I think you want a wedding, not a marriage, a wedding.

Jane: What is your problem? Did you have your own fancy wedding? And your wife left you or something?
Kevin: Bingo.
Jane: What?
Kevin: With my roommate from college, so I think you get an extra bingo for that!

Jane: I think you should just admit that you're a big softy, that this whole cynical thing is just an act so that you can seem wounded and mysterious and sexy...
Kevin: Whoa. What was the last one?
Jane: What?
Kevin: Did you say "sexy"?
Jane: What?
Kevin: You think I'm sexy?
Jane: No.
Kevin: It's okay if you do.

Kevin: I cried like a baby at the Keller wedding.

Jane: I just want you to know, I never do this.
Kevin: Oh, I know.
Jane: No, really. I never, never do this.
Kevin: No, really, I know. Last night, you kept saying it over and over again: "I never do this," "I never do this," "I never do this"...
Jane: Okay. I just wanted you to know.

Jane: You tell him the truth or I will.
Tess: No, you won't. You wouldn't hurt a fly and you definitely wouldn't hurt me, I'm your sister.
Jane: That was yesterday. Today you're just some bitch who broke my heart and cut up my mother's wedding dress.

Jane’s Aunt: Must be so hard to watch your younger sister get married before you.
Jane: Yes. Then I remember that I still get to have hot hate sex with random strangers and I feel SO much better!

Tess: You’ve been trying to take care of me since Mom died.
Jane: I had to.
Tess: No. You didn’t have to.
Jane: But if I don’t –
Tess: But if you don’t, you’ll just be my sister, which is what it should be. Maybe when I was young you needed to help me out, but now – you gotta stop taking care of me, of everybody.

Overall rating

There was good chemistry between the leads, and we could see that the characters were good for each other. I’m also a sucker for all the music – the wedding stuff and Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets. Three out of four bridesmaid dresses, which you can always shorten and wear again. So true!

Victoria Grossack loves math, birds, Greek mythology, Jane Austen and great storytelling in many forms.

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