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Made of Honor
Movie
Made of Honor
Director
Paul Weiland
Cast
Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd, Kadeem Hardison, Chris Messina



The whole point of a romantic comedy is the comfort of the ritual — the familiarity of it all, as if you're wrapping yourself in a warm, snugly blanket of knowledge that the two attractive, charming leads will surely end up with each other in the end. The outcome is never in doubt, despite the various contrived obstacles that pop up along the way.

This is especially true of Made of Honor, because it's pretty much a remake of a movie you've already seen: 1997's My Best Friend's Wedding, starring Julia Roberts and rom-com regular Dermot Mulroney. The only difference is a reversal in gender roles — so daring!

This time, Patrick Dempsey plays the one who realizes he's in love with his best friend (Michelle Monaghan), and when she announces she's getting married, he vows to undermine the wedding from the inside. Because, you see, she's asked him to be her "maid of honor." The title, of course, is a pun.

Dempsey and Monaghan have a likable screen presence individually and together, which makes the movie from British director Paul Weiland ("City Slickers II — The Legend of Curly's Gold," enough said) vaguely tolerable — for half a minute. And as Tom, a moneyed Manhattan womanizer, Dempsey does take off his shirt a lot, which is always a plus. They don't call him McDreamy for nothin'.

But then the pratfalls and the plotting become painfully cliched, and all you can do is check your watch and wait for the inevitable mad dash to break up the wedding and blurt out some long-overdue I-love-yous. In this case, the dash is actually a gallop, on horseback, across the Scottish countryside.

Oops! Sorry, don't want to give anything away.

Tom is in love, though, for the first time in his life, even though the perfect woman has been right in front of him all along. (It took three screenwriters, Adam Sztykiel and the team of Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, to come up with that premise.) Monaghan's Hannah is bright and funny and girl-next-door lovely, and since college, each has been the only person to be totally honest with the other.