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KATHERINE HEIGL takes on a dream role in 27 Dresses.
The movie focuses on a selfless, pretty young woman named Jane
who’s been a bridesmaid 27 times. Jane is once again enlisted for
the job but this time, it’s particularly painful because her
sister is marrying the man she’s secretly in love with.
Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote
the original screenplay and the adaptation for the critical and
commercial success The Devil Wears Prada, describes Jane’s saga as
“a delayed coming-of-age story about a woman who finds out what
things she needs to change about herself in order to go from being a
bridesmaid to being a bride.”
In the movie, Heigl plays Jane,
who has always been good at taking care of others, but not so much
in looking after herself. Her entire life has been about making
people happy—and she has a closet full of 27 bridesmaid gowns to
prove it. One evening, Jane manages to shuttle between wedding
receptions in Manhattan and Brooklyn, a feat witnessed by Kevin who
realizes that a story about this wedding junkie is his ticket off
the newspaper’s bridal beat. Jane finds Kevin’s cynicism counter
to everything she holds dear—namely weddings, and the two lock
horns.
Director Fletcher cast James
Marsden as Kevin after working with him in Hairspray, on which
Fletcher was an associate choreographer and second unit director,
and Marsden played the Baltimore television-dance-show host Corny
Collins. She notes the volatile Jane-Kevin relationship is a classic
romantic comedy situation of opposites repelling then attracting one
another. “You can understand why Jane resists Kevin,” says
Fletcher. “He’s sarcastic and cranky, and he nags and constantly
bugs her. His protection is his wit and sarcasm, but he’s
charming, charismatic and funny.”
Marsden was eager to tackle a
romantic leading man part. “I usually play the guy who gets the
short end of the stick in, so it is nice when I read 27 Dresses and
realized, ‘They’re considering me for the guy who may actually
get the girl!’”
27 Dresses opens on January 30
and will have special sneak previews in Metro Manila theaters on
January 21 and 22.
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