Made of Honor

Theatrical Release Date: 2008 05 02 (USA)

UPC: 043396243644

Studio: Sony Pictures

MPAA Rating: PG13   Contains:[Adult Situations, Adult Humor, Profanity, Sexual Situations]

Summary: A handsome and successful bachelor is taken aback when his dream girl asks him to be the "maid" of honor in her upcoming wedding in this romantic comedy starring Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan. Tom (Dempsey) and Hannah (Monaghan) have been best friends for years. Though all the hard times, Hannah has been the one constant in Tom's life, and the one person he knows he can always rely on. When Hannah leaves for a six-week business trip in Scotland, Tom is surprised to realize how truly lonely he is without her. Life just isn't the same without Hannah around, so the moment she returns, Tom resolves to ask for her hand in marriage. But apparently Hannah's trip wasn't all business, because upon returning home Hannah announces that she has gotten engaged to a dashing Scotsman and will soon be starting a new life overseas. She's convinced that Tom will be thrilled for her, and wants him to play a crucial role in the wedding. His spirits crushed but his love for Hannah stronger than ever before, Tom reluctantly agrees to be the "maid" of honor so that he can prove his love in no uncertain terms and convince her to call off the wedding before true happiness slips through his fingers. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Category: Comedy

Awards: Hall of Shame – Women Film Critics Circle

Features: cc
Widescreen and full screen formats
Director's commentary

Made of Honor

Format: DVD

Release Date: 09/16/2008

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Pre-1954 Standard, 2.40:1 2.40:1

Audio: DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1

Runtime: 101 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,French

Subtitles: English,French

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Disc #1 -- Made of Honor
1. Chapter 1 [6:23]
2. Chapter 2 [3:29]
3. Chapter 3 [3:32]
4. Chapter 4 [6:28]
5. Chapter 5 [4:16]
6. Chapter 6 [4:30]
7. Chapter 7 [4:06]
8. Chapter 8 [1:21]
9. Chapter 9 [4:54]
10. Chapter 10 [4:31]
11. Chapter 11 [3:29]
12. Chapter 12 [3:42]
13. Chapter 13 [4:09]
14. Chapter 14 [4:14]
15. Chapter 15 [1:55]
16. Chapter 16 [2:29]
17. Chapter 17 [1:23]
18. Chapter 18 [3:11]
19. Chapter 19 [2:46]
20. Chapter 20 [4:17]
21. Chapter 21 [3:54]
22. Chapter 22 [2:26]
23. Chapter 23 [3:53]
24. Chapter 24 [3:26]
25. Chapter 25 [1:59]
26. Chapter 26 [4:07]
27. Chapter 27 [:59]
28. Chapter 28 [5:22]

Nathan Southern

During the summer of 2008, mainstream Hollywood romantic comedies seemed fixated on male lead characters not simply driven by the need to sleep around, but by bouts of extreme nymphomania. First audiences had Ashton Kutcher as ladykiller Jack Fuller in the execrable What Happens in Vegas; then came Patrick Dempsey (AKA "McDreamy" from television's Grey's Anatomy) as bachelor playboy Tom in the Paul Weiland-directed romcom Made of Honor. Tom isn't nearly as repellent as Jack; he ultimately reveals a redemptive edge, by developing an emotional capacity to give and take that preps him for marriage (therein lies the movie's central arc - one of its few redeeming qualities). But his central defining characteristic seems to be the ability to pick up any and every woman in sight, voraciously, and a weekly "calendar" where he's reserved a specific girl to bed down with on each night of the week, on a kind of "rotating basis," like the daily soup selection at your local Big Boy. On top of that, Tom never needs to punch the clock, because he's filthy rich? It seems that in college, he invented those coffee sleeves that have since become a staple of Starbucks and other chains, and he now gets $0.10 for every one sold. So he never has to work a day in his life. Uh-huh. In the movie's most risible scene, Tom makes eyes with a sexy blonde at his local Starbucks, and she later greets him with "Oh, I'm sorry. I think I picked up your cup by mistake." And it just so happens she's written her number on the side of the cup, with a note imploring him to "Call me." Dempsey himself may go through his days racking up experience after experience like this, but in terms of almost every other man on the planet, it's a safe assessment to say that this character doesn't live in anything resembling the real world. Nor, given his insulting exploitation of women, does he readily generate any audience empathy. It would be a stretch to tag him as repulsive (he at least treats the women genially enough on a surface level to avoid that label) but not much of one. The movie's premise, of course, involves Tom's platonic friendship with Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), a beautiful young woman he met by accident (in a funny prologue) at Cornell University, circa 1998. He's fallen deeply in love with her, after ten years of (best) friendship, but he doesn't know it yet - and it takes her marital engagement to a Scotsman to bring him to his senses in a valiant attempt to win her back. And in the mean time, Hannah just happens to invite Tom to serve as her "maid of honor." As contrived as the shift in their relationship sounds, especially given the difficulty of ever "crossing over" from a platonic friendship with a gorgeous woman to a romance, that transition feels reasonably plausible here, and doesn't represent the core of the movie's weakness. Its weakness lies in its ongoing inability to draw its characters realistically. Time and again in this movie, Tom and Hannah are presented as impure and spotless (even Tom's sex life comes across as rather goofy and charming), icons of everything we're supposed to aspire to, and the supporting characters are presented as cartoons of idiocy and obnoxiousness - all losers incarnate. Take Tom's father, for example, Thomas Sr. (the late Sydney Pollack). This incorrigible womanizer, now on his seventh wife, counsels Tom by warning him that if he doesn't get his act together, he's going after Hannah. (He repeatedly admonishes Tom with, "Don't be a pussy. Why are you a pussy? Do you have to be such a pussy?") Or take Hannah's almost sociopathic bridesmaid, Melissa (Busy Philipps), an ex of Tom's who treats him so cruelly, hatefully and obnoxiously that she deserves to be fired from her bridesmaid post and never spoken to again. In the film's most unbearable scene, the one that feels really inexcusable, Melissa "tricks" Tom by advising him to hire a psychic (Mary Birdsong) as entertainment for Hannah's bridal shower. The "seer" in question turns out to be a slimebucket saleswoman who opens up a briefcase of sexual apparatuses in front of everyone and attempts to shove some of them off on the unsuspecting partygoers, meanwhile speaking in an almost molestful way to Hannah's innocent grandmother. Again: another insufferable character, thrust onto the audience - but this creep really takes the cake. On an equally problematic note, the film (written by two groups of writers - by Adam Sztykiel, and by the team of Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan) lacks all but the most rudimentary narrative structure. As in the Vegas movie, scenes aren't dramatically shaped at all; they just happen, lying there limpid and unformed on the screen, and most consist of set-ups without payoffs. We know we're in trouble when the middle of the movie could be hacked out sans any related issues. The scriptwriters do work in a few laugh-worthy moments (as when one of Tom's buddies grabs a bowl, exclaiming, "Hey, who made the party mix?" and shoves a handful into his mouth, only to have Tom exclaim, "Hey, that's potpourri!"), and they deserve some credit for creating in Tom a plausible character transition that, as mentioned, affords the movie with some depth. (Had they begun with a plausible character per se, they might have really had something). But those elements can't save this picture. Neither can the presence of Monaghan, who demonstrates a Julianne Moore-like ability to rise above sub-par material and glow brightly. In the summer of 1997, the Ron Bass-scripted, P.J. Hogan-directed Julia Roberts comedy My Best Friend's Wedding visited the said premise (albeit from a woman's point-of-view) and demonstrated some maturity with an unpredictable and reasonably intelligent outcome. With Made of Honor, one can almost hear the studio heads cooking up a formulaic pitch: "It will be My Best Friend's Wedding, remade, from a man's perspective, but we'll axe the realistic ending and increase our audience." Maybe that ploy worked in terms of residuals, but audiences don't deserve such machine-processed cookie cutter drivel. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Cast and Crew: Paul Weiland  Director 
Harry Elfont  Screenwriter 
Deborah Kaplan  Screenwriter 
Neal H. Moritz  Producer 
Callum Greene  Executive Producer 
Rupert Gregson-Williams  Composer (Music Score) 
Marty Adelstein  Executive Producer 
Ryan Kavanaugh  Executive Producer 
Aaron Kaplan  Executive Producer 
Sean Perrone  Executive Producer 
Tania Landau  Executive Producer 
Adam Sztykiel  Screenwriter 
Amanda Lewis  Executive Producer 
Patrick Dempsey  Actor 
Michelle Monaghan  Actor 
Kevin McKidd  Actor 
Kathleen Quinlan  Actor 
Sydney Pollack  Actor 
Chris Messina  Actor 
Busy Philipps  Actor 
Kevin Sussman  Actor 
Richmond Arquette  Actor 
Kadeem Hardison  Actor 
Selma Stern  Actor 
Whitney Cummings  Actor 
Emily Nelson  Actor 
Beau Garrett  Actor 

Country: USA