Made of Honour film review

certificate_12A

MADE OF HONOUR

Rehashing well-worn plots is bad enough, but doing it so poorly is unforgivable. It's hard to find anything honorable in the failure of Made of Honor and equally hard to find anything amusing in this charmless dud.

The whole 'person realizes they're in love with their best friend only when they're about to lose them' thing has been done all too frequently, with My Best Friend's Wedding being the best of the recent examples. But unfortunately for Made of Honor, there isn't a Rupert Everett to save it. What it does have is Patrick Dempsey smirking throughout in the hope his good looks will disguise the fact that his character Tom has no redeeming features.

Dempsey plays the womanizing Tom whose dating policy is governed by a series of rigidly enforced rules like no "back to back" dates. For the past ten years his best friend has been Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) who, for some inexplicable reason, he's found resistible. It's only when she leaves on a trip to Scotland he finds himself missing her. (What, and in the previous decade, she's never been away before?) Upon her return he intends to reveal his true feelings, but his plan is scuppered when Hannah announces she's engaged to the aristocratic and wealthy Scotsman Colin (Kevin McKidd). From then on Tom's mission is to sabotage the wedding and win Hannah back, a task made easier by her appointment of Tom as her maid of honor.

The central problem with the script is that in fear of making Colin the bad guy and tipping the balance too heavily in favor of Tom, it's gone the other way and made Tom so arrogant and self-centered that it's hard to fathom what Hannah sees in him. As a consequence Made of Honor resembles more a vindictive comedy than a romantic one. Though even applying the term comedy is generous. With best friends like Tom, who needs enemies?

Directed with all the deftness and subtlety of a right hook by Paul Weiland, Made of Honor punches its way to its inevitable conclusion, one that arrives long after I'd wanted to throw in the white towel.

Kevin Murphy