27 Dresses (Blu-ray)
Picture: B Sound: B Extras: C- Film: C-
Katherine
Heigl is an actress on the upswing and after Fox had a surprise worldwide hit
with The Devil Wears Prada, we can
understand why they would want to put out a similar film and meet her
increasing salary. Unfortunately, she is
one of the only reasons I did not fall asleep during Anne Fletcher’s 27 Dresses, a by-the-numbers woman’s
film fest that turns out to be the bad film many expected Devil to be. The title
refers to the number of times she has been a bridesmaid. Maybe a film about that could have been
funnier.
Instead,
we get an awkward, tired, lite love triangle between Edward Burns and the
ever-miscast James Marsden, who once again is unconvincing in a role he should
have never taken on to begin with. Though
this runs 111 minutes, it seems, much, much longer. Maybe if it were a 27 minutes short, it would
be more watchable, but then that would make it an episode of a bad sitcom. Instead, it is stretched out to the breaking
point. No wonder it died at the box
office so quickly.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 AVC @ 34 MBPS digital High Definition image is not as good as the
Blu-ray for The Devil Wears Prada
and was lensed by Director of photography Peter James, A.C.S./A.S.C., who has
one of the poorest track records around.
This includes also-unmemorable, forgettable looking films like the
dreadful Diabolique remake, The Pacifier and Cheaper By The Dozen 2. He
used to take on projects like Alive,
Driving Miss Daisy and The Thing Called Love, but his work is
too flat, slick and frankly annoying.
Some of the flaws here are probably he and the director getting carried
away with the digital internegative, but all is lame.
The DTS
HD Master Audio (MA) Lossless 5.1 mix is weak, from a dialogue-based film and
the Randy Edelman (Diabolique) score
is formulaic and only hurts a bad film.
It is better than the French Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo surround track
with Pro Logic surround, but not as much as you might expect. Extras include four featurettes and deleted
scenes, none of which could save this condescending bore.
- Nicholas Sheffo
