When critics bemoan dreary, uninspired, conventional, paint-by-the-numbers romcoms, Made of Honor is exactly the sort of film they are talking about. Admittedly a difficult genre to keep fresh and original, Made of Honor doesn’t even try for novelty. Why come up with something innovative when you can plagiarize older and better scripts?

Tom (Patrick Dempsey) lives the good life. The inventor of the insulating sleeve that fits around your cup of Starbuck’s coffee, Tom is good-looking, fabulously wealthy, lives in a palatial New York City penthouse and beds a different beautiful woman every night. Odd then that this playboy womanizer’s best and most trusted friend is Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), a down-to-earth art restorer who loathed Tom when they first met in college. What makes their relationship work is that there is no fear of sexual intimacy. Hannah loves Tom but can’t imagine dating him.

This arrangement works perfectly until Hannah leaves for a six-week business trip to Scotland, giving Tom ample time to realize how empty his life is without her. Resolving to tell Hannah his true feelings, Tom is shocked when she returns from her time abroad with dashing, handsome, wealthy Scotsman Colin McMurray (Kevin McKidd) on her arm and an engagement ring on her finger. When Hannah asks her dearest friend to be her “maid” of honor, Tom reluctantly agrees, but only so he can sabotage the wedding and woo Hannah before it’s too late.

The screenwriters are hoping that 11 years is long enough for audiences to have forgotten that there was ever a film titled, My Best Friend’s Wedding. It’s not. If I were to tell you that, unlike the superior and startlingly unconventional ending of the aforementioned film, Made of Honor ends exactly as you know it will, would you really be all that surprised? From the first moment we see Tom and Hannah together, there is no doubt that they will get together. This predictable film doesn’t even try to pretend it’s going to be any other way.

Dempsey has undeniable appeal (as does Monaghan), despite the superficiality with which their characters are drawn. If only they and the situations in which they found themselves felt remotely believable, we might have cared more about them.

The second half of the film takes place in Scotland and might be mistaken by some as an extended commercial for Land Rover. While the verdant highland landscape is undeniably beautiful, the jokes — revealing kilts, haggis, bagpipes, highland games and unintelligible accents — are straight out of Scottish clichés 101. I can count how many times I laughed out loud on one hand and still have fingers left over. Most of the guffaws in Made of Honor come cheap — sex toys for an unsuspecting grandmother, naked men sizing each other up in the gym shower, Three Stooges pratfalls, etc.

Perhaps the biggest joke of all is that respected director/actor Sydney Pollack shows up as Tom’s gigolo father, prompting one to ask: did he owe someone a favor; was he blackmailed into participating; is this his idea of pro bono charity work; was he given a king’s ransom in gold bullion? Anything other than the reality that he read and liked the insipid script.

Made of Honor is little more than a vehicle for star Patrick “McDreamy” Dempsey to set the ladies’ hearts aflutter. Will all those fluttering hearts even care that the film lacks any sort of originality, grounding in reality or ability to surprise? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.