Yes, MADE OF HONOR is a variation on MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING, with gender reversal and no gay best pal. Alas, it’s not as sharp, not as dark, and just not as much fun, starting well, but going south with alarming haste. The likable stars, Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan, generate real chemistry and have the requisite light comic touch that the well-worn premise demands. It’s the way the sloppy, tired writing handles that premise that is the undoing of it all, bogged down in the Scottish lowlands with predictable bits of piffle that are as old as the castle where they play out.
Dempsey and Monaghan are Tom and Hannah, best pals since that fateful Halloween night ten years ago when Tom crawled into the wrong roommates bed and Hannah, said wrong roommate, gave him a dose of honesty, but no nooky. Since then Tom has been smoothly womanizing every other female he comes into contact with, and Hannah has been keeping him company everywhere except the bedroom. It’s an arrangement that they both cherish, full of gossip, cake, and the quirky sense of humor that they share. That all changes when she takes a six-week business trip to Scotland. Left with only the bubble-headed women he dates for company outside the boudoir, he begins to appreciate Hannah in a whole new way. Alas, Hannah has been making some discoveries of her own. That would be Colin (Kevin McKidd), the man of her dreams, who rides up on a noble steed to rescue her from a wayward herd of cattle on a rainy Scottish night. Timing is everything. Urged on by his pals, he accepts Hannah’s request to be her maid of honor at the wedding in order to try to stop it. Not as easy as it sounds. Colin is perfection itself in everything from bank account to breeding to anatomical bits that make Tom and his buddies blanche when glimpsing them in a locker room.
The film’s first 15 minutes are its best, with Dempsey and Monaghan just being pals and getting the most from good but not great dialogue. Once the love bug bites, it’s all over and clichés abound. Manly men attempt to make gift baskets, the bridesmaids are bitchy, overweight, or both, and the running joke about Tom only being able to say “I love you” to dogs, any dog, a dog he happens to see on the street, is just silly. Sydney Pollack as Tom’s much-married dad, negotiating pre-nups as his next bride is pulling up to the church, pays little attention to his character, which is just as well, considering he’s a cheap expository device.
To his credit, Dempsey looks great, particularly in a mini-kilt (don’t ask) and invests some heart into his silent pining for the woman he is about to lose forever. Monaghan is spritely and just a little wicked, with a gleam in her eye that makes you wonder just how blind she is to Tom’s newfound passion.
Running almost two hours, MADE OF HONOR eventually goes from dull to boring and then becomes actively annoying. If only the film itself were as dynamic.
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