There's nothing remotely honorable about Made of Honor, a gender-reversed take on My Best Friend's Wedding that might be merely annoying if its leading man and its director weren't competing to see who could be more mean-spirited.
A tale of temporarily thwarted romance between alleged best friends Tom (Patrick Dempsey) and Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), this chemistry-free film begins on a low note in 1998 — one Bill Clinton mask, a sprinkling of Lewinsky jokes, a touch of vomiting — then flashes forward to establish that nothing much has changed in the ensuing decade. Tom continues to bed-hop like a superannuated frat boy, while hapless Hannah, now an art curator, is introduced with a sight gag in which she appears to be fellating a painting. She will soon go to Scotland, fall for a handsome lug, and ask Tom to be her maid of honor; he'll prove worthy of that friendly gesture by doing everything he can to sabotage the wedding.
Formulaic lo-jinks ensue, along with formulaic jokes, formulaic song cues, formulaic character arcs, even formulaic costuming. Paul Weiland's previous directing stints have mostly involved Mr. Bean, and his work here — in which stereotypes and body types are required to do a lot of comic heavy lifting — is only a smidgen more sophisticated.
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