There is a moment in 27 Dresses - I'm sure it will happen to you if you choose to spend an hour and a half of your life on this film - when you think to yourself: "Does the world really need another always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride romantic comedy?" For me, it happened as the opening credits rolled. It has a plot as predictable as a white meringue dress: a young woman, Jane, is in love with her boss but he falls instead for her younger sister; meanwhile, a charming, rakish newspaper reporter follows Jane around trying to get her to fall in love with him instead. Yes, you've guessed the ending.
I don't mean to be too harsh, because it is what it is: "great romantic comedy fluff," says Katherine Heigl. She's the other reason I can't be too mean about it. She is so likeable and watchable, like Jennifer Aniston but not as
whiny. They might have dyed her hair darker - that old trick! - to turn her into Plain Jane, but it doesn't really work: Heigl is so lovely, it makes the idea that the object of her affection falls for her trashy younger sister utterly unbelievable.
I confess I have a bit of a girl crush on Heigl; - she is funny, intelligent, outspoken and much more grounded than most Hollywood stars - even though today she seems to be inexplicably styled as the Duchess of Kent, having been doused in pearls and had her hair curled and set rigid. She perches on the windowsill of her hotel room and blows smoke out of the window. She smokes two cigarettes in quick succession.
After appearing in last year's Knocked Up, a critical and commercial hit in which Heigl played Alison, a successful young woman impregnated by a stoner loser called Ben, why would she want to be in something as safe and dull as 27 Dresses?
"I loved the script," she says simply. "I thought it was very fun and honest. I liked that she was so flawed, she was kind of a coward and quite selfish. She put herself in circumstances where she could be the martyr and the hero all at the same time."
Heigl, 29, has been in the cast of the US drama Grey's Anatomy, as Dr Izzie Stevens, since 2005 - she won a best actress Emmy for the role last year - but it was Knocked Up that brought her to worldwide attention. The film was criticized for being misogynistic, and in an interview with Vanity Fair, Heigl admitted she thought the film was "a little sexist. It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys."
Those comments provoked quite a backlash, and Heigl was described as ungrateful and a traitor. Some people even suggested she would never work again. Was she surprised at that?
"I was. Maybe it was naive of me," she says. "I think that the reality of starting to become successful is that [some people] want to slate you for something - put you in a box and put a label on what sort of a person you are. I'm not wild, I haven't been to rehab, I don't do anything eccentric - I'm really boring. So that's where they have to go."
She stands by her comment, but says the sexism element "didn't lessen my enjoyment of the movie. That's where the comedy lies, between these polar opposites and stereotypes of female-male behavior. I don't know a lot of guys that act like Ben, but we know that some exist. I don't know a lot of women who act like Alison, but again we know that some women do. Those are the stereotypes, and they're exaggerated. But it seemed to me that she was such a stiff, she had such a stick up her ass. I wish she had been a little more fun.
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