Wednesday, June 04, 2008

27 Dresses

Is it just me or did Pythagoras make this film? That was pretty much my reaction to 27 Dresses. This movie “starring” Katherine Heigl and James Marsden, follows the typical chick flick formula. Jane (Heigl) is someone who is always a bridesmaid and never a bride. She seems to hold down two jobs: a full time assistant to a man that she is in love with and a doormat who people use to plan their weddings. However, they don’t pay her for her services, and all she gets to do is be a bridesmaid. She is perfectly happy with this life until her sister comes into town and falls in love with Jane’s boss and becomes engaged to him. This throws Jane into a tailspin as she must plan her sister’s wedding to the man they are both in love with. Enter Kevin Doyle (Marsden). He comes into Jane’s life and refuses to leave it. In the beginning he tries to get on her good side to get the dirt on a story he is currently writing, however, as anyone could predict, he falls in love with her, sees the error of his ways, and becomes a better person.
Well, now that I am done throwing up I can continue with this review. I would just like to say that this movie was so formulaic that it could have been written and directed by mathematicians. I do apologize to mathematicians EVERYWHERE for this offense. We as film viewers do understand that we do not go to a chick flick to be mentally challenged, but c’mon, use some originality, morons! I could predict what was going to happen even before it happened in the movie. I am not psychic or intuitive or anything, it was just the film seemed to not progress beyond the storyboard aspect of development. On top of the horribly unoriginal plot, there was the acting. NOTHING in this movie made me care for anyone. I didn’t care what happened to the characters; they could've fallen down a sewer for all I cared, and I blame this on the terrible acting. I know that it was probably hard to get any emotion out of this math problem of a movie, but they didn’t even try. It was completely ridiculous.
Some people (myself included) have said, yeah, it was not a great movie, but it had some cute points. Does that mean you would go and watch an autopsy if it had cute parts? My answer is no! There is nothing cute or precious enough in this film to even remotely save it. This film gets a -12, and I should consider some shock therapy as a way to forget this movie.

5 comments:

Dr. Worm said...

So, did you like the movie?

Just kidding. I am piqued by something, of course. Stormy Pinkness rightly criticizes 27 Dresses for not deviating from a pre-set formula, and heaven knows I've chided chick flicks (and other genres) for being overly formulaic as well. But...

When I think about it, the most recent Indiana Jones movie seems to me to be no less a slave to formula, yet both SP and I gave it a 10. And when you get down to it, there are very few films that can't be reduced to an easily recognizable formula. So I'm starting to think that it's not that movies are bad because they're formulaic; it's that bad movies don't allow you to forget that they're formulaic. Thoughts?

Stormy Pinkness said...

I think it is that bad movies don't allow you to forget that they're formulaic.

Mike said...

Formulas are your friend. Having said that, a bad movie isn't a movie that doesn't allow you to forget that it's formulaic.....it's a bad movie when there's JUST a formula, with not well-developed characters, story, or heart behind it. M. Night Shamalamadingdong is another example of this: EVERY single one of his movies follows the EXACT same structure, and I'm ashamed America has taken so long to figure it out.

CmdLuke said...

Nice review.

I imagine that the amount of times I laughed during the 5 minutes spent reading your review was about 300% more than any time I would laugh, cry or feel any emotion other than anger for spending my money on that movie.

I guess Kathrine Heigl shouldn't quit her TV show just yet.

Moshe Reuveni said...

Your math teacher must have done a worse job than mine!
For the record, there are plenty of math applications that are far from predictable, at least as far as human intuition is concerned.
I would say that in many respects history is much more cyclical and therefore predictable than most of the math used in running our modern world.

And for the record, re the above discussion, I fully agree with YRF.