Film

You might be rolling your eyes and groaning at the thought of yet another nuptial-frenzied rom-com. In fact, you might just want to forgo the movie altogether and sit at home and read Rebecca Mead’s One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding in protest. But if you are dragged to this, you may be pleasantly surprised by the personable qualities of its leads and antagonists, Heigl and Marsden.

Still, the film has plenty to make you grumpy. The most tedious shots of the New York skyline signify the general mediocrity of this tale of Jane (Heigl), a perennial bridesmaid and an enabling assistant to an eco-mogul (Burns) whom she’s also in love with, and Kevin (Marsden), a journalist stuck in the “taffeta ghetto” writing wedding announcements. Director Fletcher, a choreographer whose helming debut was the bad boy–good girl dance drama Step Up (2006), can at least film a convincing electric slide. The script by Aline Brosh McKenna shows little of the assistant-lit zing evident in her screenplay for The Devil Wears Prada. But verbal sparring is presented as a virtue, and anger redeemed as energy.

They’re no Hepburn and Tracy, but Heigl—her quivering double chin a welcome sight in a profession of dangerously low BMI—and Marsden skillfully find the believable traits in their characters and turn them into some semblance of adults. And after her hideous love object in Knocked Up, it’s nice to see Heigl’s Jane end up with a more worthy companion.