27 Dresses

A frothy delight that has many charms, even though Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote the hilarious 2005 screen version of The Devil Wears Prada, offers only scant surprises in her script.

That 27 Dresses has more mainstream appeal is not only a credit to Katherine Heigl’s ability to evoke sorrow and sharpness but to the film’s very blueprint.

27 Dresses is one heck of a happy date movie. Smiling faces are guaranteed on all seen exiting when the credits finally do roll here.

A somewhat predictable but unapologetic chick flick that's surprisingly painless thanks to strong writing and casting that keeps things fun without resorting to stupid or obvious gags.

The movie has the look and feel of old-school Hollywood, where solid little pictures like this were cranked out on a weekly basis, not to become classics but simply to entertain.

The film's humor alternates between the obvious and the sly, but even the obvious stuff is pretty amusing

27 Dresses is a movie for people who want to know exactly where a film is taking them at all times.

Predictable but utterly engaging, 27 Dresses will likely be remembered as the film that made Katherine Heigl an A-list star.

This movie is lot like the old pie in the face gag: light, frothy and predictable, but still sort of funny and cute.

If 27 Dresses were part of a wedding reception, it wouldn't be the bouquet toss, but it wouldn't be the Chicken Dance, either.

Despite its shortcomings, 27 Dresses is likely to succeed because of its appeal to a vast target audience: former bridesmaids everywhere once forced to wear the unimaginable.

For those who love to cry at weddings -- and chuckle along with a lovelorn protagonist forever stumbling down the rocky road to romance -- 27 Dresses should satisfy your yearnings quite nicely.

Katherine Heigl was not the main reason that Knocked Up was such a big hit, but her big-screen appeal is no fluke, as she proves in her follow-up film, a more formulaic romantic comedy, 27 Dresses.

Katherine Heigl is who Charlize Theron wants to be when she dresses down.

As cinematic bubble gum goes, 27 Dresses retains its sweetness just long enough to rationalize the empty calories -- even while it gives audiences nothing of substance to chew on.

Although it incorporates every boy-meets-girl, romantic-wedding-comedy cliché there is, 27 Dresses still sort of grows on you, thanks to Katherine Heigl’s engaging performance.

Cliche characters, predictable situations and too many ideas copied from 1990s-era Julia Roberts movies pose a challenge to Knocked Up star Katherine Heigl's demonstrated comedic skills.

If Heartbreak Kid and The Wedding Crashers are up your alley, you may not find 27 Dresses crude or broad enough.

27 Dresses is an illustration of what can result when the filmmakers possess a solid understanding of the romantic comedy formula and decide never to stray from it by one iota.

27 Dresses is like one of the many bridesmaid dresses featured in the film: frothy, predictable and over the top.

The romantic comedy 27 Dresses will work best for people who have never seen a romantic comedy. If you have, you might find it amusing to tally up the steals -- I mean, homages.

It's hard to imagine a set of complications more routine, but the way that this tiered cake of a farce has been staged, you can practically lick the white frosting off of the plot.

27 Dresses is a familiar wish-fulfillment fantasy about a woman who must let go of her hang-ups and neuroses before she can realize that the perfect guy is right beneath her nose.

It's not one for the ages, but this comedy about the "perpetual bridesmaid" suggests a romantic marriage between star and audience that could last and last.

27 Dresses is the type of movie people tend to describe as "cute" with a condescending inflection that drains any hint of fondness from the word.

I predict a happy union between 27 Dresses and cable TV, forever rerunning with commercial breaks tailor-made for laundry-loading and sandwich-making.

It's possible, being from Mars instead of Venus, that much of the resonance of a movie about a serial bridesmaid is on a frequency I can't hear.

The eerily precise Katherine Heigl, who provided confident back-court support as the exile in Guyville also known as Knocked Up, has no trouble filling a leading lady's shoes.

Calling 27 Dresses predictable is putting it mildly. From the opening scene, it's painfully obvious exactly where the film is going and how everything is going to turn out.

There are glimpses of the wit Aline McKenna displayed in Prada, but these brief gasps of life are quickly suffocated by the inevitable schmaltz.

Katherine Heigl swirls just the right mixture of saccharine and spice for the role, which requires her to seem aggravated by the state of things but still inexplicably hopeful.

James Marsden's natural charisma is totally wasted in an unlikable role, while Ed Burns doesn't even try to hide his boredom.

No worse and no better than the majority of chick flicks, 27 Dresses features appealing and gorgeous Katherine Heigl as - how original! - a desperate Manhattan singleton.

The only bright spot is James Marsden, a great actor who's always stuck playing the less-desirable romantic rival (see: The Notebook, X-Men, Superman Returns).

The film is competently directed by Anne Fletcher, the onetime choreographer who designed the love-in that climaxed The 40-Year-Old Virgin and made her directing debut with the inner-city dance-off Step Up.

Guys who caught their girlfriends rolling their eyes when Bruce Willis jumped onto the wing of a moving jet in Live Free or Die Hard will now have an opportunity to do some eye-rolling of their own.

Katherine Heigl fights an uphill battle in 27 Dresses, a chick-flick compendium of wedding cliches that will have every guy bolting for the exits.

In 27 Dresses, the New York settings are beautiful, the plot twists are hackneyed and the characters are paint-by-numbers clichés.

Pretty much all of the humans in 27 Dresses are ninnies. (In a battle of wits, those dresses would win.)

27 Dresses is ultimately nothing more than a slightly above-average rom-com whose gears and wheels turn with predictable precision.

Whatever originality there is in 27 Dresses is awfully small, maybe size 1. Too bad they didn't accessorize it with more creativity.

Anyone who has the slightest doubt about where this movie is heading probably leads a full and rich life that doesn't include watching romantic comedies like My Best Friend's Wedding.

Light, formulaic and soft around the middle, choreographer-turned-director Anne Fletcher and Aline Brosh McKenna's "always a bridesmaid... " tale doesn't miss a pop-psych or pop-culture cliché en route to its fairy-tale ending.

This Anne Fletcher-directed wedding fantasy marches out every simpering genre cliché imaginable.

For mildly discerning viewers 27 Dresses is like re-swallowing something you already coughed up.

Most garden-variety romantic comedies end with a wedding. Not to be outdone, 27 Dresses is filthy with weddings.

The film 27 Dresses only seems like a lobotomy. In fact, this is public surgery to install a new vacuum tube for airheads into the generic chick flick, model 2008.

All the plot elements that we're encouraged to care about in 27 Dresses resolve in a dud, and the only thing that feels good about the feel-good finish is that it means the movie's over.