Most of what one needs to know about Made of Honor can be gleaned by looking at its DVD cover art, which was the same as the film’s theatrical release poster. Patrick Dempsey gazes straight at the viewer, with a wry, welcoming smile. Michelle Monaghan looks longingly at him, lips pursed. And both are air-brushed to a creamy monotone. It’s the perfect metaphor for a movie that has obviously had plenty of the spiky edges of its original conception smoothed down, polished to an agreeable, mass-market tone. It’s not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that, it just is what it is — a sign of how Hollywood unfailingly attempts to create, both in actuality and impression, blandly similar product.
Directed by Paul Weiland (a fact that lost me about four or five
minutes, wondering how different the film would have been if directed
by ex-Stone Temple Pilot frontman Scott Weiland), Made of Honor opens with a screwy college meeting of Tom (Dempsey) and Hannah (Monaghan); the former is dressed in a Bill Clinton mask and looking for sexual escapades, the latter gets mistaken for her roommate. A perfume macing ensues, but flash forward 10 years and the pair are best friends. They even have a little every-Sunday routine of dim sum, trolling for antiques at the local market and stopping off for a spot of shared dessert, where they play cutesy games over what will be ordered. Tom still has commitment issues, in no small part because of his father (Sydney Pollack), who’s seen entering into his sixth marriage with a gal (Kelly Carlson) with whom he has his lawyer negotiate bi-monthly blowjobs as part of a clause in their pre-nuptial arrangement.
When a six-week business trip to Scotland nets Hannah a suitor and proposal from the dashing Colin (Kevin McKidd), she asks Tom to be her maid of honor and, advised by a friend (Kadeem Hardison, who if he’s in a movie really should be sporting flip-up glasses) that it’ll be easier to bring down the whole relationship from the inside rather than the outside, Tom accepts. Frou-frou shenanigans follow, with Tom getting heaps of crap from a bridesmaid (Busy Phillips) that hates him, and finding out that Colin is a more formidable romantic rival than he first figured.
A lot of the scenarios, story choices and accompanying production flourishes in Made of Honor
feel lazily nipped from other films — right down to the inclusion of Tomoyasu
Hotei’s “Battle Without Honor or Humanity,” used widely elsewhere, including in the
trailers for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, in a slow-motion scene that introduces the
bridesmaids. The banter is slightly above average, but what helps give the movie a small amount of lift is mostly Dempsey, who
brings a nice, light touch to a character who could otherwise easily come across
as too much of a have-his-cake-and-eat-it-too lothario. Ergo, as the saying goes, those who like this sort of thing will find much in this thing to like.
Made of Honor comes housed in a regular plastic Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover. Its dual-layer disc offers up viewers a choice of 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen or 1.33:1 full screen presentations. An audio commentary track from Weiland serves as the only bonus feature on the disc. On it, he talks up the production’s shifts to various locales (both England and Los Angeles at times substitute for New York), and points out his son in the background of multiple shots. Weiland also mock-apologizes to a test-audience screening member for a scene in which Tom leaves a pair of sunglasses in an open convertible in New York, one of but several scenes in which there’s a sloppy disregard for prop detail. One of my pet peeves also receives more filmic ammunition when Tom carries a pair of very obviously empty coffee cops to his car. Still, who cares, right? After all, these are beautiful people! For a clip from the movie, click here; to purchase the DVD, meanwhile, click here. C+ (Movie) D (Disc)