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Made of Honour

Editorial Review

Were you to ask Tom (Patrick "no, call me Dr McDreamy" Dempsey) why he was departing New York for the Isle of Skye, hot on the heels of Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), he would succinctly reply: "My best friend's wedding". Hold the phones. What's up, Doc? Wasn't there a successful, beloved rom-com called My Best Friend's Wedding which starred Julia Roberts as a chick trying to ruin impending nuptials because she'd realised she lurved her long-term pal of the opposite sex? Hoping for originality from the love/laughs genre is a one-way ticket to heartache but founding a film on a cheap carbon copy is a recipe for dumpsville.

As always happens in the real world, Tom and Hannah have been platonic bosom buddies for a decade. He's the kind of casual-sex dreamboat who makes the ladies overheat just by looking at them in a coffee shop, yet he acts like a giggling school girl with charming yet oddly single Hannah. Great Scots, though. Hannah impulsively agrees to marry kilted Colin (McKidd) after a UK work trip, prompting "maid of honour" Tom to formulate a devilish derivative plan to destroy her imminent wedding from within.

Dempsey and Monaghan have easy-going chemistry, and the rom-com check points ticked on the way down the aisle aren't without gentle laughs or warmth. But the inevitable shift to Scotland for the ceremony is the mediocre cake's stale icing. Like Laws of Attraction and P.S. I Love You before it, Made of Honour sinks quickly once it lands on British soil. Radiant Monaghan must leave rom-coms before they consume her, and Dempsey's charm can do more. Pray they both don't just follow Sydney Pollack, whose ace presence here is tempered by realising he's on auto-pilot for cash.

Ben McEachen