27 dresses (12A): Bette Midler, taking aim at fuddy-duddy Britain, once joked that if it�s three o�clock in New York it�s still 1938 in London. Anne Fletcher�s old hat of a romantic comedy tries to pull a similar stunt with time

Star rating: **
Dir: Anne Fletcher
With: Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Judy Greer, Edward Burns

Bette Midler, taking aim at fuddy-duddy Britain, once joked that if it's three o'clock in New York it's still 1938 in London. Anne Fletcher's old hat of a romantic comedy tries to pull a similar stunt with time. Though set in contemporary Manhattan, 27 Dresses has its fluttering heart in the 1950s, an era when every girl was thought to yearn only for a big fat white wedding to the man of her dreams. Why, it's almost like that nasty old feminism never happened.

27 Dresses doesn't quite go as far as staging a mass burning of The Female Eunuch - think of the mess, my dears. Written by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada), it opts instead to don a flowery pinny and serve up a yummy batch of new-style fondue feminism. There's an awful lot of cheese here, but just enough spice has been added to stave off painful indigestion. That, anyway, is the plan.

Meet Jane Nichols (Katherine Heigl). She's twentysomething, plenty gorgeous, with her own home and a presumably highly paid job as an executive assistant. She also has 27 bridesmaid's dresses in her wardrobe, each a hideous reminder in silk and lace of happy times at other people's nuptials. Jane yearns to one day ask for a return of the favour, and she already has a groom in mind, her dull but kindly boss George (Edward Burns). He, however, remains oblivious.

Now meet Kevin Doyle (James Marsden). Kevin is a reporter who writes about weddings but hates them with a vengeance. Kevin thinks marriage is "the last legal form of slavery" (we're liking Kevin already, aren't we, boys and girls?) and can't wait to ditch the society stuff to write about war and crime.

When career bridesmaid Jane meets the cynical Kevin at a wedding she becomes that thing irresistible to any reporter - the great story waiting to happen. Plain Jane would pay more attention to what scheming Kevin is up to were she not distracted by the arrival on the scene of her glamorous sister Tess (Malin Akerman) and the growing friendship between Tess and George.

Within minutes of sitting down you can tell where the story is heading. Usually, predictability is half the charm of a romantic comedy. With the guarantee of a happy ending practically written on the cinema ticket, the director's job is to make the journey novel and interesting. Fletcher, an actress and choreographer turned director, is having none of that and hauls her movie straight up the aisle in lead-lined boots. There is a brief detour when sweet Jane gets to behave badly for a while, but you can tell Heigl and the director are impatient to get back to the hearts and flowers stuff.

Though she remains as engaging as ever, this is a very different Heigl to the one on display in Knocked Up. In its depiction of modern relationships in all their messy glory, Judd Apatow's unplanned pregnancy comedy was the anti-rom-com with Heigl as its anti-heroine. The character she played then was smart, ambitious, prepared to break the rules, and not afraid to let rip with her anger when the occasion demanded. The scene where she confronted the idle father-to-be, played by Seth Rogen, about his shortcomings, still has the power to shock and awe. Nice girls don't do that sort of thing in movieland.

But 27 Dresses sees Heigl put away her Rosalind Russell in favour of a Doris Day act. Many have tried before to be this or that year's DD - Goldie Hawn, Renee Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon among them - yet none has managed to match the von Kappelhoff girl's knowing innocence. Day remains one of the toughest screen acts to follow, in large part because she could do so much so well - from searing drama in Love Me or Leave Me to the sheer fun of Calamity Jane - but also because times have changed. Blonde ambition today extends further than spring-fresh linens.

If Heigl wants to fill Day's high heels she'll need spikier material than this. Save for the odd zinger of a line and a tasty performance from Judy Greer as Jane's sarky pal, Fletcher's film is content to be just another bland chick flick. Given so many chances to be different, it opts for the screamingly obvious. Why couldn't Jane, for instance, have been the boss? Why did her sister have to look as though she's sprung fully formed from a calendar on a garage wall? This stereotyping comes, let's not forget, from a female writer-director team.

Today's chicks are looking for more in a flick than reheated stories and sexual politics from the dawn of time. Give us wit, intelligence, honest human drama. Give us Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, not safe options and fluffiness. A taller hero than James Marsden wouldn't have gone amiss, either. Otherwise, Hollywood, we need to talk.