27 Dresses (Theatre) - Jennie

I’m no longer into Romcoms. I feel in the early days of the genre there was substance to these movies. I could be wrong, but here we go. Think about films like When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Splash (1984). These movies were directed by the likes of Ron Howard and written by Nora Ephron. This wasn’t a throw away genre. True, young actors who were barely in their prime were staring in these projects, much like 27 Dresses’ Katherine Heigl. And yes, the plots were formulaic. Harry did literally run after Sally. But Hollywood recognized that these films were well made. Nora Ephron got nominated for an Oscar for writing When Harry Met Sally, even though there was a stale chase scene at the end of the movie.
These days this genre is as much, if not more, of a subgenre as Sci-Fi, which brings me back to the name, Romcom. Much like the Sci-Fi genre these movies are slowly becoming written for a very small subgroup of moviegoers. Women made up 75% of the population that went to see this movie. 75% (I have stats if you wish)! And let me tell you, it was made for them. The male characters were two-dimensional props stood up next to the female leads as eye candy for the female viewership. This mirrors nicely with the Sci-fi genre were the females seem to be eye candy for the largely male viewers (just watch any Sci-Fi channel original movie. I swear those ladies were plucked from the nearest porn set in the exact costumes they were in).
This movie made me cringe at multiple times. The movie opens with Jane Nichols (Katherine Heigl) attending two weddings at once where, we are to understand, she is the glue that holds the ceremony together. At the end of each wedding Jane is thanked in front of the whole crowd by the bride. I do not remember seeing the groom once in either ceremony. We are then introduced to Jane’s life where she is under appreciated and takes care of everyone, ahhhh. The venerable bridesmaid of Romcoms, Judy Greer, plays the same role she always plays as Jane’s best friend/coworker at Urban Everest where Jane is an assistant to George (Edward Burns). George is a wealthy philanthropic dogooder who is the object of Jane’s affection. He obviously hasn’t noticed this yet. This is about all we will ever know of George's character, though he is one of the leads. The second male lead, and the winner of Jane’s affections by the end of the movie is Kevin (James Marsden). He is the commitments writer for the New York Journal, but hates weddings and marriage in general. Kevin did have some pretty nice oneliners about how horribly capitalistic the wedding industry is but the writers quickly doused that fire before it could turn any of the audience members off of his character. They explain that he is cynical about weddings because, gasp, he had the perfect wedding before and his wife left him for his college roommate (when this was reveled I heard sighs from the theatre, literal sighs.) Kevin dates Jane, Jane almost falls for Kevin, Kevin betrays Jane, Jane returns to George, George realizes the truth about Jane, they kiss, nothing is felt, Jane realizes Kevin is right for her, perfect wedding, end!
I can't portray the kind of loathing that I have for poorly made movies like these. Why waste the time, the money, the film? I know these movies aren’t made for me. But, it corrupts the delusional minds of the viewers into thinking that weddings are magical egotistical days where the man is an afterthought and the perfect dress can and should cost more than 10,000 dollars. Come to think of it, much like the sci-fi genre corrupts the delusional minds of its viewers into thinking that with the right construction of rings they can travel to different dimensions. Romcoms nerds are the new Sci-Fi nerds. But I fear that while the Sci-Fi nerds know that that is fiction, the Romcom nerds do not. Here’s to hoping.

4 out of 10: watchable, but contains more cliches than you can shake a stick at.

P.S. Jennie told me to say that women could enjoy it.