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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Made of Honor

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#1 of 1 Posted 5/3/08 3:04 PM

From harveykarten Posts 798 Last Feb-7
To All [Msg # 23108.1 ]

MADE OF HONOR

Columbia Pictures
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B
Directed by: Paul Weiland
Written By: Adam Sztykiel, Deborah Kaplan
Cast: Michelle Monaghan, Patrick Dempsey, Kevin McKidd, Kelly Carlson, Busy Philipps. Sydney Pollack, Kathleen Quinlan
Screened at: AMC Empire, NYC, 5/3/08
Opens: May 2, 2008

Men! Women! If you really want to test whether you like each other romantically, do what the characters in Paul Weiland’s romantic comedy, “Made of Honor,” do—albeit unwittingly. When you’re in a restaurant, order a dessert that your date likes and you do not particularly care for. Let’s say he likes lemon bundt and she likes chocolate. If you each nibble from the other’s dish, you’re in love. This is one of the subtle premises written into Adam Sztykiel and Deborah Kaplan’s script for a movie that may follow the trajectory typical of almost all Hollywood romances, i.e. keep the loving couple separate until the conclusion when they finally realize they are made for each other. Other than predictability, though, “Made of Honor” could go down as one of this year’s most critically underrated features.

Without necessarily realizing it, the scripters help answer the question “Can a comely man and an attractive woman who see each other regularly be nothing more than best friends? Ultimately the conclusion would be “no way.” Platonic relationships of the kind enjoyed by serial fornicator Tom (Patrick Dempsey) and his best pal Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), must be simply a function of the Hollywood dream machine. Tom plays the game of hard-to-get, one more commonly associated with women, by refusing to see any of his bed partners two nights in a row and by refusing to call a date for an encore until at least twenty-four hours have elapsed. His cool, rich dad (Sydney Pollack) has just married his sixth wife after a frantic, last-minute pre-nuptial negotiation between the two: she while riding in a limo to the wedding hall with her lawyer. Dad’s serial monogamy translates into serial one-night stands for his handsome son.

Tom realizes almost too late that he cannot live without Hannah when his best friend takes off on business to Scotland, where she meets-cute a local duke, the fabulously wealthy Colin (Kevin McKidd). She announces her engagement, asking Tom to be her maid of honor since, after all, they are best friends. After being kidded by his motley gang of male pals, he accepts the role only to exploit it to get closer to the love of his life and disrupt her wedding plans.

Though Dempsey at age forty-two appears too old for the role (Monaghan is thirty-two while Dempsey is supposed to be her age), his thick head of hair and boyish good looks allow him to fit in as a crediblel life’s partner—and besides the two have genuine chemistry thanks in part to fine comic direction by Paul Weiland (“City Slickers 2”). If you think that marrying a multimillionaire with a castle for a summer home and another mansion for regular living would be great, just consider what it would be like to move permanently from the world’s most exciting city (New York, where else?) to the bleak albeit beautifully-photographed Scottish highlands, where the most exciting event in your life is hearing stories about the Loch Ness monster. “Made of Honor” may dabble in some vulgarity—such as that of a bunch of men gaping in amazement at the middle regions of a fellow in the shower and the key woman’s cleaning up the similar area of a painting at the Metropolitan Museum—nothing in “Made of Honor” is of the Judd Apatow variety of humor where it would be misplaced. Instead the picture is sweet but not without a healthy touch of satire, an entertaining fairy tale of a guy who can get any woman he wants but instead wants the one he cannot easily win over. The chickens come home to roost for a compulsive player of the game of hard-to-get.

Rated PG-13. 101 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Made of Honor

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