*

Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd, Sydney Pollack, Kathleen Quinlan. Screenplay by Adam Sztykiel, Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont. Directed by Paul Weiland. Rated PG-13. 101 minutes. Sony Pictures.

A dreadful film. Made of Honor, the paper-thin and shopworn new romantic comedy about an unrepentant bachelor realizing a bit too late that he’s in true love with his lifelong best friend, is threadbare movie parading ineptitude as insight, cartoons instead of characters and screenwriting in lieu of sincerity.

The film begins on the wrong foot in 1998, when a meet-cute mix-up on campus ensnares cocky Tom Bailey (Patrick Dempsey) in the bed of girlfriend’s roommate Hannah (Michelle Monaghan). Flash forward to the present and the film asks us to accept the 42-year-old actor as a character ten years his junior. Ryan Reynolds would have been a more appropriate casting choice.

A platonic, When Harry Met Sally-esque friendship finds Tom and Hannah living as confidants in Manhattan, best friends who share intimate details of their relations while shopping downtown, lounging in cafes and strolling Central Park. If the film had stuck with this vibe between them, it may have gotten somewhere and both actors are comfortable in this mode.

Tom is yet another stunted, G.Q., Type-A Manhattan yuppie afraid of commitment and sleeping around with half the city—faceless women who must abide by his playbook of rules, including “no back to backs” and “no weddings or family events.” He picks up women at Starbucks while cruising Times Square in his convertible (never traffic for guys like Tom) and playing b-ball with a collected group of nerds. Hannah does little except counsel Tom on his love life.

Unless I missed it, neither Tom nor Hannah has a career to speak of, so there’s plenty of time for relationship talk until bam, the screenplay sends her on a trip to Scotland just long enough for Tom to realize he actually loves her. When she returns aglow with a new finance, seemingly perfect Scottish royalty Colin (Kevin McKidd), she requests befuddled Tom to serve as maid of honor for her splashy Scottish wedding. Uh-huh. Soon he hatches a plan from a much, much better film—My Best Friend’s Wedding—to sabotage the nuptials. Does anyone have any doubt exactly how this will end up?

At this point, the film devolves into a broad piece of junk. What’s wrong with it? For starters, the movie thinks that aside from Tom and Hannah, the rest of the world is made up of broad and ugly cartoons. It takes every opportunity to make fun of its supporting cast, including endless jokes about nerdy basketball players, psycho bloggers, shrewish bridesmaids, trashy young wives, bubba-buddies, vacuous girlfriends, gays, penis jokes, a mentally incompetent grandma’s confusion over sex toys and dumb eccentricities in Colin’s Scottish clan. Everyone, it seems, is a loser except its attractive leads.

This would be fine were the film a farce, but it doesn’t have the pace or timing, and it falls flat on the stupidity of adults behaving like toddlers in nearly every scene. Dempsey does three slapstick pratfalls and is forced to deliver lines like, when commenting on Monaghan’s wedding day up-do, “It looks like a co-op for parakeets.” Who talks like that?

And who thinks this is funny? I’m not being a curmudgeon, and I liked 27 Dresses, P.S. I Love You and Baby Mama just fine, thanks. But this is one shallow and derivative movie. When Harry Met Sally traversed the friendship much deeper, My Best Friend’s Wedding (which this film clearly rips off) was sweeter, lighter and more honest, while The Graduate got to the church on time, a scene this film apes awfully with slapstick and cliché. Both Sydney Pollack and Kathleen Quinlan are wasted as parents of the star-crossed couple.

Director Weiland leans on blaring pop music to do the heavy lifting instead of the script. At one point in the climax, song lyrics explain, “I’m crying my heart out,” while Dempsey’s sullen face indicates as much. Whatever happened to writing these exchanges? And exactly what makes screenwriters believe that audiences wish to identify with such pretty, perfect people in such shallow and predicable situations? I liked seeing Dempsey juggle expensive china and he is typically fine here, but the handsome, urban, single guy finding love thing that worked so well in Enchanted doesn’t work in this mess.

Monaghan, fresh off great work in Gone Baby Gone, North Country and other meaty roles, is too smart for this script, re-written by multiple screenwriters, and it shows.

Made of Honor is not filmmaking—it’s pastiche.

- Lee Shoquist

lee@atnzone.com