HYPOCRISY, thy name is Katherine Heigl.
The “Grey’s Anatomy” actress is back on the big screen Friday in a new romantic comedy, “27 Dresses,” which reinforces just about every chick-flick stereotype there is. Heigl’s character is a Type-A, single New York working gal who’s the world’s best bridesmaid – but secretly pines for her own special day.
Will she get it? We’ll only divulge this much: There is, at one point, actually a scene in which someone interrupts a public event to declare his or her undying love for someone else.
Then – wait for it – the crowd applauds as they kiss.
But far be it from us, as devoted fans of “When Harry Met Sally,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and even “Sweet Home Alabama,” to denigrate the rom-com genre as a whole. All this cliché-reinforcing would be perfectly tolerable if not for a couple of remarks the actress made recently in the press.
Heigl let slip in a Vanity Fair interview that she thought “Knocked Up,” the Judd Apatow-directed comedy in which she starred last summer, was “a little sexist.” She found it “hard to love” because it “paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as goofy, fun-loving guys.”
It was a point of view she’d presumably kept to herself throughout production – she’s since said that “Knocked Up” was “the best filming experience of my career” – and during the month of its release, in which the movie was near-uniformly hailed as an honest, refreshing update of a tired old formula.
And then what did the sexism-sensitive Heigl follow it up with? The story of a woman with wedding bells on the brain.
“Thelma & Louise,” it ain’t.
To be sure, Heigl’s comment didn’t occur in a vacuum. It was one of a chorus of rants that followed the initial success of “Knocked Up” claiming the movie portrayed women as one-dimensional while its men were nuanced – if largely immature – creatures, more accurately evoking actual human beings.
These screeds seemed to lack any cinematic perspective, though: Given the rest of last year’s romantic offerings – “Because I Said So,” “Good Luck Chuck,” “License To Wed” – it hardly seemed fair to single out Apatow’s film simply for being from the perspective of a schlubby stoner dude.
If Heigl really wants to go for feminist films, why not work with female directors such as Kimberly Peirce (“Boys Don’t Cry”) or Tamara Jenkins (“The Savages”), who avoid trafficking in sexist cliches? Or, for that matter, male directors who do likewise, such as Neil Jordan (“The Brave One”)?
Because Heigl does have a point – the world does need more films starring goofy, fun-loving women.
And we’re pretty sure that sort of woman would never, as Heigl’s character does in “27 Dresses,” spend every weekend getting the shoes dyed to match the dress.