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Sports‘Made of Honor:’ Been there, seen that
Friday, May 9, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Peter Iovino⁄Sony Pictures
Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) asks best friend Tom (Patrick Dempsey) to be her maid of honor in the romantic comedy, ‘‘Made of Honor.”
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Of course, sequels rarely work as well as the first film, especially sequels that don’t do much to distinguish themselves from the original. Then there’s the ‘‘heavily inspired by” movies where the filmmakers hope the audience won’t notice the numerous similarities between movie A and movie B.
Ten years have passed since Tom (Patrick Dempsey, ‘‘Grey’s Anatomy”) first met Hannah (Michelle Monaghan, ‘‘The Heartbreak Kid”) and while the two are best friends and do almost everything together, their relationship has remained strictly platonic despite Tom’s womanizing ways. It seems kind of strange that a completely self-respecting woman would be best friends with a womanizer, especially one with whom she’s in love as well.
Hannah is constantly amazed that Tom can have so many meaningless relationships while being a stickler to his set of rules, such as not calling a woman after getting her number for at least 24 hours or not seeing the same woman on consecutive dates.
The one woman he can’t live without is Hannah, but he doesn’t actually realize it until she leaves for a business trip to Scotland for six weeks and returns with a Scottish dreamboat of her own, Colin (Kevin McKidd, ‘‘Journeyman”). Hannah announces on a whim she is going to marry Colin in two weeks.
And since she expects to be Tom’s best man, she wants him to be her maid of honor. Convinced by his pals that the best way to prove to Hannah that he has matured and is the right guy for her is by working from the inside, Tom agrees to the responsibility of dealing with Hannah’s daffy bridesmaids. A male maid of honor trying to handle his friend’s bridesmaids should have made for a more entertaining and original movie, but originality has no place in romantic comedies these days.
Colin is the perfect guy, sweet, dashing and reliable and not the typical jerk who you’re hoping Tom can stop from ruining his friend’s life, which makes for an unusual dynamic.
The script, penned by the three-person team of Adam Szytkiel, Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, is spotty and fails to address the simplest of questions let alone connect the dots to some major gaps in character logic. For instance, what does Tom do during the day? Or why would Hannah, after carrying a torch for Tom all this time, fall head over heels for Colin in a mere six weeks?
Like ‘‘My Best Friend’s Wedding,” the writers ask the audience to root for the completely self-absorbed, inconsiderate ‘‘friend” who wants to spoil his friend’s happiness because he wants to be with her all of a sudden. So we’re supposed to be rooting for the jerk?
If there’s ever been anyone who is taking advantage of his celebrity status while it’s hot, it’s Dempsey. Instead of making ‘‘serious” films with a message to show his range as an actor, Dempsey is smartly starring in films that will get his ‘‘Dr. McDreamy” fans to the theaters.
Even with the weak material, he still makes Tom somewhat sympathetic and a character you care about and he ventures out into some physical comedy in this outing, showing even the dreamiest of us can still be clumsy.
Kadeem Hardison (‘‘Bratz”) and Syndey Pollack (‘‘Michael Clayton”) have welcome supporting roles as Tom’s best friend and father respectively and they make their characters genuine in their limited screen time.
‘‘Made of Honor” is Dempsey’s first starring role since his career resurgence, and he proves he’s more than capable of carrying a film and not just being male eye candy. If you’re a Dempsey fan you should enjoy it, but those seeking a more meaningful romantic comedy should probably just rent ‘‘My Best Friend’s Wedding” instead.
