Review: Made of Honor

How do I loathe the soul-crushingly predictable Made of Honor? Let me count the ways.

Made of Honor

How do I loathe the soul-crushingly predictable Made of Honor? Let me count the ways. One: The appalling pun in its title (see also Maid in Manhattan—or rather don’t!). Two: “And Sydney Pollack,” who is not to be confused with Sydney Pollack; the latter directs while the former, not unlike “And James Woods,” acts in crap like this so his ostensible prestige will rub off by proxy, even though his first big scene has his character trying to work a “bi-monthly bj” into a prenuptial agreement. Three: Kevin Sussman, whose character “Tiny Shorts Guy” negates whatever sense of esteem “And Sydney Pollack” was meant to drum up. Four: Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) inexplicably bobbing her head up and down while retouching the penis of a Jesus-like dude in a painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Five: Dialogue like “It was a night out of a Brontë novel,” even though the meet-cute between Hannah and the Scottish Colin (Kevin McKidd) is more accurately described as “out of the imagination of V.C. Andrews,” though as a lover of Modigliani, Hannah may be forgiven for her twisted sense of romantic sentiment. Six: The fact that the film’s music supervisor received a screen credit when the songs that appear on the soundtrack were clearly imported from a sorority girl’s iPod. Seven: Smash Mouth’s “Walking on the Sun” is officially more obnoxious than Smash Mouth’s “All Star.” Eight: The running gag of having glow-in-the-dark “thunder beads” humiliatingly hang from the neck of Hannah’s clueless grandmother throughout the entire film. Nine: Just when I thought, “I would rather be home watching The View than watch this film,” the man-whore played by the vanilla Patrick Dempsey, in a desperate attempt to be the perfect maid of honor for his best friend Hannah, gets advice from 12 Steps Down the Aisle by Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Ten: That Tom’s (Dempsey) only evidence that he’s better for Hannah than Colin is that the Scottish both eat and kill their own Bambi, throw logs for sport, style their hair in the shape of bird nests, have brides wear sashes on their wedding dresses, and sound as if they’re saying “asshole” when they talk.

Score: 
 Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd, Kathleen Quinlan, Kadeem Hardison, Chris Messina, Richmond Arquette, Busy Philipps, Whitney Cummings, Emily Nelson, Sydney Pollack  Director: Paul Weiland  Screenwriter: Adam Sztykiel, Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont  Distributor: Columbia Pictures  Running Time: 101 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2008  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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