Movie Review - Made of Honor

Director: Paul Weiland

Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd, Busy Philipps

It’s easy to see that this one has romantic comedy written all over it, but what they neglected to mention was that it attempts to be every other type of comedy as well, all at the same time.

The plot and main characters are all straight out of the textbook, but there are a few incredibly strange and random choices for jokes and minor characters it must be said.
Dempsey plays Tom, a playboy type of guy who enjoys sleeping around but who enjoys the company of friend Hannah (Monaghan) most of all. Tom and Hannah have never slept together, but instead share a best friend type of relationship. So when she meets a strapping young Scottish man whom she is to marry, Tom is pretty cut up. She asks him to be her maid of honor and he agrees with the secret intention of breaking up the wedding from the inside and taking her for himself.

Made of Honor is a slightly alternative set-up on the classic romantic-comedy formula but it’s still rather standard in the scheme of things. However where they lost me was about halfway through when the narrative takes us to Scotland. The film became wildly unbelievable and lost any of the good work that it had done in the build-up. What worked for the movie was in its jokes and humour based around the obvious gender issues of Dempsey’s character’s position. These were genuinely funny and were much needed. But instead of exploring this further, it fell back onto weak attempts at cheap laughs by using obvious quips. The random nature of these simply didn’t fit the genre and the movie lost its credibility to me.

The overall concept of the film had promise but the execution was not so hot. It had perfect casting choices for the leads, with Dempsey and Monaghan blending together really well, but it really was a missed opportunity overall.