I am sorry that I am reviewing 2 romantic comedies back-to-back, but when you are married and you love your wife, you tend to make sacrifices in the movie department.

It’s pretty hard to find a really good romantic comedy, in fact most of the good ones are few and far between. I don’t know whether it’s because all of the good ideas have been taken, if the studios/directors/writers know that there isn’t any money in them, or if the general public has just grown tired of the same ole’ same ole’. Whatever the case may be, Made of Honor doesn’t come close to being one of the “good ones.”

Patrick Dempsey stars as a womanizer named Tom (yeah, nice leap there Patrick) who is best friends with Michelle Monaghan’s character Hannah, who of course is the only woman he has yet to woo. This sets up nicely the My Best Friends Wedding formula that we’ve all seen. Hannah then goes away for work to Scotland and when she returns to meet back up with her BFF Tom, who has been spending the days lamenting her absence because he just “can’t live without her”, he gets the shock of his life when Hannah introduces to him her fiance Colin (played robotically by Journeyman’s Kevin McKidd) and asks him to be her maid of honor.

If you haven’t seen the movie or heard anything about it, I’m pretty sure you can already predict where this one is going. If you predicted that Tom would suddenly realize his true feelings for Hannah and spend his days strategizing and sulking with his stock group of buddies on how to ruin the wedding and reveal his true feelings while playing basketball and taking showers in gyms (not because that’s what guys do, but because that’s what women think we do)…then you would be spot on. Dempsey never steps out of his generic character to display any true emotion and nor does he even at all reflect the title of the movie. Scheming with your buddies on how you can ruin your best friend’s wedding just because you suddenly felt lonely doesn’t sound too honorable to me. He just needs to stick to Grey’s Anatomy.

Michelle Monaghan is the only reason I didn’t demand to my wife that we turn this movie off. I think she is going to be seen a lot in films to come. She is a fresh new-comer who really knows how to show her humility while remaining quirky, funny, and beautiful, in a weird way. I didn’t buy nor did the movie explain her relationship with Dempsey and why it existed and what it was founded on. He mistakenly in college walked in her dorm room to hook up with her roommate and that’s the genesis for this deep and intimate friendship? Nope. I don’t buy it. In fact, if she was as smart as the movie wanted us to believe she was, she wouldn’t tolerate the way Dempsey treated women. But, since this is a generic rom-com, that kind of behavior can be forgiven easily.

The movie didn’t flow well, the pace was erratic, and the story was just another basic fantasy taking place in today’s world without any resemblance of heart. I thought the director at times wanted too much out of us as an audience, wanted us to believe things that weren’t even remotely believable, nor plausible, and that they wanted us to take giant leaps of faith in regards to the many character holes in their personality. The movie’s theme is honesty, and honestly, I won’t ever see this one again.

Content Warning: Rated PG-13 for sexual content and language. There are no sex scenes, but some intense and passionate making out.

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