Made of Honor (+ BD Live) (2008)

And a rainy day. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the film.

Tom (Dempsey) and Hannah (Monaghan) met at a Cornell costume bash 10 years before when a drunken Tom, dressed as President Clinton, stumbled into a dorm room and a girl's bed thinking he'd found "Monica". Turned out he'd gotten the wrong girl. "Monica" was Hannah's inebriated roomie.

They were friends from that moment, sharing Sundays, confidences, and desserts. Tom didn't know how much they shared til Hannah headed for Scotland and stayed gone six weeks. He was ready to propose when she came back, but she returned with a man, Colin (McKidd).

Hannah and Colin were going to be wed in Scotland in two weeks and Hannah couldn't think of anyone she wanted to be her Made of Honor more than her longtime best friend. Tom reluctantly accepted, secretly agreeing to become the best maid of honor and wreck the wedding.

What happens had me laughing until tears streamed down my face. I needed the break and "Made" defintely offered it. Tom hosting the wedding shower was a screamer--particularly when the jealous female friend who wanted to be the "MOH" set him up with a sex toy salesperson and Hannah's sweet Grandma ended up with a necklace of 'thunderbeads.' Then, of course, there was the Highland Games with Tom and Colin tacitly competing for Hannah's hand, Tom dressed in a mini kilt. (Nope, he wasn't dressed regimental--darn!)

Director Sydney Pollack showed up in a rare movie role as Tom's oft-wed Dad. The prenup agreement with Wife 5 (or was it 6, Dad can't remember) had me roaring. The car with the intended bride had to literally go around the block at the church to iron out last-minute details.

Plus, the scenery from Scotland was amazing. I recognized some places I'd been a few years before--and definitely remembered the flock of Hieland Coos stopping traffic on mainstreet.

The music was good, a mix of contemporary plus some old Scottish tunes. I notice there's no soundtrack available. I hope there will be one. It was a pretty decent collection.

The film's what you'd expect and yet, it's still entertaining. And, sometimes you just need something that's a gimme when it's a rainy day and a cheap laugh will lift a few clouds.

Rebecca Kyle, May 2008

In college, Tom (Patrick Dempsey) was a lady's man. He slept with anyone who will have him. Sneaking into a room one night, he accidentally meets Hannah (Michelle Monaghan). Despite their less then great meeting, the two hit if off and become friends.

Flash forward 10 years, and little has changed. Tom spends every night with a different woman. And he spends all day hanging out with Hannah, who is now working for a museum. The two are close friends, but that is all.

Until one day when Hannah leaves on a six week trip to Scotland. It doesn't take Tom long to realize that he truly loves Hannah. In fact, the separation is killing him. He intends to act on his new found feelings as soon as she gets back.

But when Hannah returns, it is with Colin (Kevin McKidd) in tow. The two met in Scotland and are engaged. To further add to Tom's misery, Hannah asks him to be her maid of honor. Tom is reluctant, but decides he can break the wedding apart better from the inside. But with the ceremony only two weeks again, can Tom make Hannah fall for him?

So let's get the obvious out of the way first, the story is predictable. So, the movie is going to rise of fall based on how well everything else comes off.

And it comes off reasonably well. Hannah is likable from the start. I admit it took me a little while to warm up to Tom since I'm not a fan of cads. But as the movie progressed, I found it easy to root for him. In fact, I cared about the characters enough to get invested in the outcome.

And the story is funny. There are quite a few great moments that had me laughing, especially Tom's friends helping him learn how to be a maid of honor.

This movie is just an escapist romantic comedy. But that's all it wanted to be in the first place. If you keep that in mind going into it, you'll have a good time.

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This is such a fun movie to watch. Patrick Dempsey is great and adorable in this movie. I have watched this movie several times and never get tired of seeing it over and over. Lots of fun!!

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I can't believe all the low ratings for this movie! I liked it...it's not super original and it's very predictable but hey, it's a date movie. There's some funny moments and yes, it's a basic rehash of "My Best Friend's Wedding" but I think "Made of Honor" is better. I didn't really like "My Best Friend's Wedding" mainly because I didn't really like Julia Robert's character and there really wasn't any chemistry between her and her male co-star. I am a Dempsey fan (loved him in "Enchanted"...) and I thought Patrick Dempsey was very charming in "Made of Honor." I think the chemistry between him and Michelle Monaghan was great. It's a cute movie.

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Don't you just hate it when the woman you secretly love gets engaged with another man? Tom (Patrick Dempsey) certainly does; he's been best friends with Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) ever since college, but only when another man proposes does Tom finally admit that he loves her. Now all he has to do is win her back. The idea behind "Made of Honor" is certainly classic as far as romantic comedies are concerned, which I guess is why the filmmakers stirred things up by making Dempsey's character the Maid of Honor. Then again, "stirred things up" might be too strong a term here; this movie is about as predictable and contrived as romantic comedies get, offering absolutely nothing new ... except, of course, for that whole male Maid of Honor thing. That, and a scene in which Hannah's grandmother wears a string of glow-in-the-dark sex beads, thinking it's a regular necklace. You certainly don't see that everyday.

The truth is that "Made of Honor" is no better and no worse than you expect it to be--you want a romantic comedy, you've got a romantic comedy. But if you want something more, something with greater depth of character and a few less one-liners, I'm afraid you'll have to keep looking. I won't go so far as to say that this movie is bad, but it definitely doesn't want to be anything other than Hollywood fluff with one or two over the top gags. I've repeatedly observed that romantic comedies never represent reality, but merely the illusion of happily ever after, and rest assured that "Made of Honor" is no exception to the rule. The problems with this film don't stem from an unrealistic plot filled with unrealistic characters; they stem from how ineffectively these unrealistic elements are used. You watch this film waiting for something new to surprise you, only to leave feeling as if you've been there and done that.

Still, there are worse films out there. I did smile more than once at the onscreen chemistry between Dempsey and Monaghan, chemistry so prominent that it seems unlikely their characters would act on their feelings so late in the relationship. Ten years ago, while still in college, Tom and Hannah met while he was dating her roommate. After a Halloween party, he snuck into Hannah's room wearing a Bill Clinton mask, believing her roommate was already there and waiting. Instead, he finds Hannah, who immediately sprays perfume into his eyes because she thinks he's an attacker. After flushing his eyes out in a water fountain, they strike up a conversation; Tom apparently believes that honesty is the best policy, especially for men who sleep around as much as he does. Hannah seems to find him charming, but she boldly asserts that she never sleeps with anyone like him.

In present day, Tom is the exact same womanizer he's always been. He's learned from the best; his father (Sidney Pollack) marries for the sixth time within the first thirty minutes of the film. Tom now follows a strict set of rules: never take any one woman on two consecutive dates, and wait at least twenty-four hours before calling someone new, because you'd seem desperate otherwise. How he maintains this lifestyle, I have no idea; what he does for a living is never alluded to, but his spacious Manhattan apartment hints at a decent salary. Be that as it may, he and Hannah--now an art historian--have been the best of friends ever since that fateful Halloween night. When she's called away to Scotland for six weeks, he begins to realize the affect she's had on his life; after all, the two have been virtually inseparable for ten years. Maybe he is in love with her. Maybe there's more to life than just sleeping with women (a concept his basketball buddies don't seem to understand, naturally).

Unfortunately, Tom gets the surprise of his life when Hannah returns to New York with her Scottish fiancé, Colin (Kevin McKidd), who's both a Duke and an owner of his family's whiskey distillery. Since Hannah knows that she would be Tom's Best Man at his wedding, she thinks it's fitting that he be her Maid of Honor. He begrudgingly takes on the role, believing he can somehow make her see that he's the right man, not Colin. As Tom plunges into the blatantly feminine world of wedding coordination and shower planning, he grapples with buried feelings, bad advice, and the wrath of Hannah's resentful cousin, Melissa (Busy Philipps).

The last twenty minutes of the story proper takes place in Scotland, where Hannah plans to live after the wedding. Naturally, this is when the romantic feelings between her and Tom finally begin to surface, and this, of course, creates more tension for that climactic moment when Tom rides a horse to the church and flies through the entrance. This is but one of many moments that sound funnier than they actually are. One of the film's most unnecessary side characters is a desperate nerd that tries to play basketball with Tom and his friends: How many times do they have to tell him no before he gets the idea? There's also a moment early on when Hannah is restoring a painting of a nude male; the movements of her head give the impression that she's giving the figure oral sex. The moment in and of itself is amusing, but it certainly doesn't work within the context of the story. But the biggest problem of "Made of Honor" is much more basic than a few inappropriate laughs--its formula is overused, a condition Dr. McDreamy can't even treat.

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