A review of the movie 27 Dresses

In this comedy drama, the star is the lovely Katherine Heigl who stars as the perpetual bridesmaid Jane to a diverse group of brides whom she was buddies with.

Then if flips ahead to the present time, where she is now a grown up bridesmaid to two weddings in one evening in Manhattan.

I had read a review that was somewhat negative about this movie, saying that it portrayed women as needing marriage to be happy. First of all I don’t think this is a movie designed to send a broad message but is more of a character portrayal for the particular individuals involved and the whole idea wasn’t portrayed as universal but more to the hopes of an individual in a particular place and time.

And the movie itself doesn’t read this way as sending a broad message. Jane is a person who has a good corporate job, and when she goes home she prefers not to read the sections of the paper that involve a good degree of bad news on the broader fronts but she enjoys and saves some of the clippings from the romantic commitments sections that involves real life stories leading to marriage.

Within this, she seems like a person who is just genuinely interested in this, just as some other people are genuinely look forward to the sports columns, the travel columns, business columns or the fuinnies or even the bad news.

Some people are drawn to status, power, money and they actually do feel a pull towards this, The character of Jane is truly drawn to romance and stories of romance and this is something she simply likes.

While she wants something like this for herself, the evidence is mainly circumstantial and she doesn’t quite admit it as it is an uncertain hope and she has never landed there herself and now even if she does it will be a bit of an uncertain landing from where she is now.

Even though she is quite attractive, her circumstances in this movie are believable. She has a busy job, in a big city, lot’s of friends to attend to, and she has trouble saying no to whatever her friends ask from her, and being that she is popular, this becomes potentially demanding. She is on the lookout for herself only in moments rather than having a strategy, but the seas are as uncertain as waiting for the bouquet that the bride throws back at the wedding.

She has a sister who comes back to town named Tess, who has a history of being more of an international jetsetter with various boyfriends.

Her main hopes for romance now form out of her admiration for boss at work, George played by Ed Burns.

Here is where some of the circumstantial evidence forms. She goes to work every day and works hard and proficiently but a major ongoing motivation to being at this particular work place even though the job itself is good is towards possibly breaking through to a relationship with George who she now sees as an ideal guy for her based on his overall good qualities and kind manner.

She has a simmering anger that comes to the forefront when her romantic hopes are dashed right before her eyes. This anger wouldn’t be there if she didn’t care so much about this. She would be able to brush it off more lightly, but her deep caring wells into anger because what she cares about evaporating before her eyes.

And of course other people care about other things, some people get very angry when their favorite team loses the big game. Again this movie was more about an individual who really cared about something particular to what they wanted and appreciated.

Some people like cars, in their various makes and models and some people are indifferent to cars.

For Jane there is an uncertainly as to whether the gentle breezes of romance will ever find her. Some significant time has already passed her by and her younger sister has had many quasi romances of the non committal size.

There is an area where this movie passes in to the realm of amazing.

The way the character of Jane leads, you see that she has hidden high hopes but has never found a landing point for them. There is a lack of recognition and clarity as to what she really wants in the specifics or even knows about her wanted person in the ideal but also just as much who she is within this if it where to happen.

You might think of someone who is playing say a sport and then finding out how they are within the sport, maybe say skiing for the first time and doing well or more so not even knowing the manuevers involved beforehand to the skill of being able to ski. There can be a number of ways and a number of areas that involve self discovery for anyone.

In a scene in what is way upstate New York, she is with someone who may now be the beloved and this compelling scene makes this movie a must see.

Not too much is being said or is happening yet but in this moment the camera focuses and then stays on her just in profile and goes right to her eyes from the side and it is a scene of wonderment and lingers in this moment. It was almost as if she finally landed on the moon and everything about is so wondrous to her that it isn’t describable in words but in just her look where she is now at a place she never though she would actually arrive at or even maybe existed within her as well. But this look seems to say that the enormous wonder is also about finding who she is in this realm and finding this out is big part of this great discovery.

The camera work for this one scene and what is captured is right up there with one of the best scenes you would ever see in a movie. If the camera angle had been different, and it was an unusual angle, it wouldn’t have happened.

In one of the naysayer moments of the movie, someone questions her motivations and says that that she more wants a wedding then to be married.

Yet there is circumstantial evidence that it is otherwise. In yet another great scene, when she gets a chance to be alone with George in an outdoor café by the park, you can see how much she more so wanted to talk as the territory and bloomed to just being alone one on one with great conversation that seemed to enliven her.

The contrasting scenes of her being lonely in the crowd and alone, don’t linger but do tell the story of trail of loss that has been followed by her or maybe also has followed her. Across the board she really tries hard in everything she does, but she is last on the list of things to take of it seems.

In later scenes, she sees her sister Tess, who at first is portrayed as somewhat superficial, as putting up false fronts to please a love interest. Yet you can see that some of this anger is coming from an inner directed anger, that she just hasn’t been able to break through her own fronts to what she really wanted and she might be putting on false fronts to herself, being an almost total people pleaser to the extent of not investigating or prioritizing what she wants for herself. Her own interests were put on the backburner or last in line. While her sister has put up fronts to others, she has put up fronts to herself.

Another key character to this movie is a writer, who is putting up his own fronts, first symbolized by using a pen name for his writings.

Another nice theme of this movie that came in later with other characters was the idea of clearing the deck for a fresh start and giving to a complete start over leaving the baggage of yesterday behind and away. What was particularly good about this movie is it never really got overly harsh or judge mental towards what was happening in the various characters and their ongoing difficulties and instead tried to draw them out gently.

It gave this movie a feel like it was just the right breeze on a great day somewhere great.

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