MADE OF HONOR (2008)

MADE OF HONOR
**
Rating: PG-13
Length: 101minutes
Director: Paul Weiland (City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold; Leonard Part 6)
Writers: Adam Sztykiel, Deborah Kaplan (Can’t Hardly Wait; A Very Brady Sequel), and Harry Elfont (Can’t Hardly Wait; A Very Brady Sequel)
Starring: Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Sydney Pollack, Kevin McKidd, Kathleen Quinlan, Kadeem Harrison, Chris Messina, Richmond Arquette, Busy Phillips, Kelly Carlson, Mary Birdsong, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Whitney Cummings, Emily Nelson, Kevin Sussman

“Made of Honor” is “My Best Friend’s Wedding” with the roles in reverse. Instead of the female being in love with her male best friend, now it’s the male best friend in love with the female. In both cases, right when they are about to profess their love to the other, they find out their friend is getting impulsively married! With all the bank “My Best Friend’s Wedding” made, it’s surprising that this idea didn’t come around sooner. Maybe they were just waiting for Patrick Dempsey’s comeback? Dempsey stars as Tom. In the beginning of the film, he is a horny college kid who stumbles into the wrong bed. He meets Hannah (Michelle Monaghan- whom I thought was Liv Tyler for the entire film). She calls him sexist, he calls her uptight. An instant life long friendship is formed and they don’t sleep together. They end up laughing about the incident and watching Tom’s actual date barf. Flash forward a good amount of years and Tom and Hannah are inseparable. It’s perfect for Tom. He sleeps with as many girls as he wants, has a strict set of rules that prevents him from being in a relationship, and gets to hang out with the beautiful, smart, and fun Hannah in his off-time (somehow Hannah has managed to stay off the market herself). Of course, he loves her, but doesn’t know it. He invites her to his father’s (the great Sydney Pollack- what are you doing in this movie?) sixth wedding and we find that Hannah is definitely in love with Tom (how a male and a female could hang out this long without admitting their love to each other or some kind of slip up occurring is simply impossible, but I’ll let it slide because they’re be no movie if that were the case). Hannah’s job sends her to Scotland for six weeks and Tom falls apart. He admits to his friends that he loves Hannah and is going to tell her so first thing when she gets back. Of course, when she returns she has a new fiancée at her side- the dashing Scottish Duke Colin (“Trainspotting”’s Kevin McKidd). To add insult to injury, Hannah asks Tom to be her “Made of Honor”. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where things are going to go from here and how things are going to end up. So why bother? I don’t know. Is it possible the romantic-comedy genre is finally starting to have every single ounce of originality drained from it? I believe so. But as long as they keep making them, girls will keep dragging guys to them. Even though the typical romantic-comedy fan has seen this type of movie two dozen times, odds are they will still love it. You could do worse, but then again, you could certainly do better. Some people just want that happy ending, even it means going on repeat every time.

Download Soundtrack MP3s:
Sara Bareilles- Love Song
Smash Mouth- Walkin’ On the Sun (right click “save as”)

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