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Even Patrick Dempsey's charms can't save this wedding film disaster
By Rich Heldenfels
Popular culture writer
Published on Friday, May 02, 2008
The logic behind Made of Honor's premiere this weekend is clear. Men and boys will be off seeing Iron Man. Women — or women with their very understanding men — will have Made of Honor as a romantic-comedy alternative.
But if a woman is looking for this kind of entertainment, then find a DVD of Four Weddings and a Funeral or My Best Friend's Wedding or Enchanted or any other film you can think of that is NOT Made of Honor.
I know, you're thinking that a guy is not a fair judge of movies too often summed up as chick-flicks. Well, I saw this in a theater where most of the audience was female. The reaction was tepid, and in some cases worse than that.
In spite of the charms of Made star Patrick Dempsey — Derek ''McDreamy'' Shepherd on Grey's Anatomy — Made of Honor is a mess, a story badly told and poorly paced.
If you have seen the countless commercials, you know the premise. Tom (Patrick Dempsey) is a commitment-defying rogue whose longest relationship with a female has been a platonic one with Hannah (Michelle Monaghan). Tom is beginning to feel ready for a romantic link with Hannah, only to discover she has fallen for another guy (Kevin McKidd). Making things worse, Hannah wants Tom to be her maid of honor. So he is both in the middle of the wedding arrangements and intent on keeping the wedding from ever happening.
You may be thinking that Made of Honor is a gender-switching variation on My Best Friend's Wedding. In some respect, yes. But as uneven as that Julia Roberts vehicle is, it is a far more entertaining piece than Made of Honor. The I Say a Little Prayer scene in My Best Friend's Wedding is by itself better than anything Made of Honor can produce.
One big problem: Made of Honor takes forever just getting to the point where all the pieces of the romantic triangle are in place. We sit through Tom and Hannah's meeting in college. Through their regular meetings with each other. Through a separation, when Tom realizes how he feels about Hannah.
Then, and only then, does the movie start. But it's not even an efficient little creation when it gets to that point. Made of Honor repeatedly drags and labors to come up with ways to keep going long after its plot has revealed its thinness. The overly obvious ending drags as well; a smart editor would have cut it about two scenes earlier.
Recent months have not been good for romantic comedies, especially ones with TV stars. 27 Dresses, with Grey's Anatomy's Katherine Heigl, had some entertaining bits but a lot of barren stretches. Over Her Dead Body, with Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria Parker, was nearly unwatchable; I gave up half an hour into the DVD, even though I like its male lead, Paul Rudd.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, with How I Met Your Mother's Jason Segel, is better than either of those films, but it's not quite in the same genre. The male frontal nudity, though well-publicized, still shocks some moviegoers. And it's an awfully serious movie for a comedy — more like a drama punctuated by laughs.
Made of Honor is marginally better than Over Her Dead Body, but not as interesting as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, nor as mechanically efficient as 27 Dresses. Mostly it's a bore, the best bits squandered in the trailer.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com. You can find more columns, questions and answers at http://www.ohio.com/entertainment/heldenfels.
The logic behind Made of Honor's premiere this weekend is clear. Men and boys will be off seeing Iron Man. Women — or women with their very understanding men — will have Made of Honor as a romantic-comedy alternative.
Get the full article here.
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