| Life With Ferris: Planning Three Rehearsal Dinners
I have been to a great many weddings lately. My friends' children are all at the marrying age, and they all seem to be getting married this year.
Every single wedding I have been to has been absolutely exquisite. There have been vows exchanged at sunset on the river, with flocks of doves skimming the water as if on cue. There have been brides in heirloom wedding dresses, with mothers so lovely they stole the show from their beautiful daughters and sons.
I have eaten shrimp and grits, beef tenderloin, fresh corn pudding, grilled lamb and chilled salmon, stuffed grape leaves, fried green tomatoes and wedding cakes I still think about. I have toasted and roasted and laughed and cried at these weddings. But mostly I have made notes. I have lists of flowers I like and food I adore and places that would be good for rehearsal dinners.
Katherine Heigl is all about speaking her mind
"Oh, man, I'm tired," Katherine Heigl said. She laughed. It was 9 a.m. on a recent Saturday morning and Heigl was wearing a full-length red Oscar De La Renta dress, black shawl over the shoulders. Her hair was blown out, face fully made up. This week very much promised to be busy -- and all about her. She was getting married in a few days to singer Josh Kelley -- a destination wedding on her property in Utah. She was still deflecting comments she made in the January issue of Vanity Fair. And she had her first big starring role in a movie to promote. For now, Heigl was sitting under a heat lamp outside at the Four Seasons Hotel, smoking and drinking a pot of coffee with Splenda before heading back upstairs to her "holding suite" before a day's worth of promotion for her new movie, the romantic comedy "27 Dresses." .
WEDDED MISS Katherine Heigl glows, but 27 Dresses ' formulaic romantic ...
Even before you've seen her, you know her. Jane (Katherine Heigl) is the perennial sad singleton, lonely but eternally hopeful. She's in love with her boss (Ed Burns), who treats her like the world's most lovingly cared-for doormat, and she has been an eager and devoted bridesmaid 27 times, with her leftover dresses in all their fruit-hued, puffy-sashed, prom-discard plumage lined up in the closet to prove it. You already know him, too. Kevin (James Marsden) is the jaunty solo male, unlassoed by love, who somehow manages to pen the tenderhearted ''Commitments'' column in the Sunday wedding section of the New York Journal. Staring him in the eye, she asks: Does he really feel all those warm, sincere, special-day sentiments? Or is he just a cynic spooning out ''romantic crap'' for women like her? That's a question you could well ask the people who concocted 27 Dresses: screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who previously wrote the hit screen adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada, and director Anne Fletcher, a veteran choreographer who turned filmmaker with Step Up (2006).
Amusing 'Dresses' not terribly witty
Would you believe lovely Katherine Heigl has filled a closet with bridesmaid dresses but never received a proposal? If so, "27 Dresses" is the movie for you. As the actress gets under way as Jane, she convinces us she not only has missed the love boat, she has enjoyed the chores of planning a wedding. Also a bit of a credibility challenge is the fact she's in love with her boss, who doesn't view her as a romantic partner. Luckily, Ed Burns plays George as charming enough to merit Jane's feelings but manages also to be a philandering cad to those whose eyes are not clouded with love. The final humiliation comes when Jane's sister, Tess (Malin Akerman), back from Europe, steals George through a series of lies and her beauty. When James Marsden's Kevin, a wedding writer for a newspaper, discovers Jane's closet, she is flattered and he sees a story that might propel his career.
Formulaic chick flick lacks subtly, surprise
The adage goes that on her wedding day a bride should wear something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. If the new romantic comedy "27 Dresses" was such a woman, she definitely would be wearing something old and something borrowed. "27 Dresses" isn't a movie made for theaters. It plays more like a made-for-TV special. It's one of those movies in which 10 seconds after a character is introduced, you know where he or she will wind up at the finale. Surprise and originality are traits this movie studiously avoids. And that's a shame because the film features two likable leads in Katherine Heigl ("Knocked Up") and James Marsden ("X-Men"). But both play types rather than real people. Heigl's Jane is the idealist, the romantic always willing and able to help others, a giver who has never taken.
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