Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. How many times have we heard that cliche? It should, by now, be relegated to the embroidered throw pillow in your grandma’s favorite chair.

Here then is 2008’s “27 Dresses” directed by Anne Fletcher (“The Proposal” 2009, and “Hocus Pocus 2” 2022.)

So why did a humble reviewer agree to view this terrible movie, when so many other Heigl films are available?

Clearly because I love Katherine Heigl, she of the peaches and creamy honest face, I first saw at the beginning of her career on “Grey’s Anatomy,” but especially in Judd Apatow’s 2017 “Knocked up” with Seth Rogen. So there.

Here, in “27,” stranded without Apatow’s touch, Heigl’s Jane struggles to bring, as usual, freshness and light to a girl who just can’t say no to every girl who wants to get married and needs a bevy of bridesmaids.

In Jane’s closet, that resembles something out of a Goodwill wedding department gone wrong, she features 27 different bridesmaid dresses in Crayola colors.

In Fletcher’s film, we first watch Jane getting her braids in a knot whenever she sees boss George (Ed Burns, “Friends With Kids” 2007) a stiff who buys his shirts and ties in one box, but she’s too shy and busy being a wedding mechanic to make a play for him.

So, of course, Jane turns into wet tissue paper when her baby sister from blonde hell, Tess (Malin Akerman, “Donor Party” 2023) comes back to town full of everything a cardboard boss like George loves, lights up George’s sky, and snatches him away.

About 326 cliches later, here comes newspaper semi-handsome love columnist Kevin Doyle (James Marsden, “Jury Duty” 2007) a nice, happy, perfect guy for Jane, who, as a minor writer, longs for a reason to get promoted, sniffs a break and sets about chasing down Jane and her 27 bridesmaid closest from hell, and wouldn’t you know, falls in love with Jane in a club, as they dance to Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.”

Yes, I know, it’s one of myriad chick flicks, closet Cinderella, cliche soaked scripts you used to love and then grew up. It gets worse.

I refuse to reveal the surprise ending.

I apologize, but I survived it, and I’m still covering all the Heigl films hoping to discover what it was I liked about her in “Knocked Up.”

Try this one, “Firefly Lane” on Netflix.

“27 Dresses” can be seen on DIRECTV, Disney Plus, Netflix, Prime Video, Vudu or Apple TV on your Roku device.

 

J.P. Devine of Waterville is a former stage and screen actor.

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