How today's audience, in a time of smart comedy like The Office and Family Guy and Arrested Development, could possibly find anything funny - really, anything at all - about kilts and haggis, grannies and sex toys, an overweight bridesmaid who can't fit into a dress, a drunken college girl barfing or, worst of all, impersonations of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski, is totally and utterly inexplicable.
These things are in fact so painfully unfunny, they call for a new rating - something that's equivalent to an R, say, but applied specifically to comedy, so anyone with an even remotely functioning sense of humour should be prevented from seeing the film in theatres. Although the pun-based title of this atrocity, Made of Honor, does hint somewhat at the inanity to come, it doesn't quite convey the fact that those who make the mistake of purchasing a ticket will have to be made of far stronger stuff than honour to withstand the barrage of offensive pap that comes hurling off the screen.
Having been scarred so deeply by this, it's difficult to know where to begin with all the criticism. Is it best to start with the soul-shredding soundtrack that includes such expired Top-40 hits as Smash Mouth's "Walking on the Sun" (a song that so poetically rhymes words like fashion with passion)? Or maybe it's better to talk about the scene where we see Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) bobbing her head up and down as she retouches the crotch of a naked man in a painting at the museum - outrageous! But no, let's just begin with the so-called climax, when Tom (Patrick Dempsey) gets thrown off a horse and flies through the chapel doors, landing prostrate in the aisle right when the minister asks if anyone objects to the marriage of Hannah and Colin. Now that's timing.
Then again, in light of the fact that every single frame of this movie is horrendous, it's probably as appropriate as anything to start at the opening, where we see a much younger Tom - also played by Dempsey but with a disturbing amount of either Botox, airbrushing, digital retouching or all of the above - walking into a dimly lit dorm room where he expects to find the girl he was just flirting with. Instead, he finds Hannah, who promptly bolts up in bed and sprays him in the eyes, not with mace but a bottle of Calvin Klein's Eternity.
It's love at first sight - at least until Tom can get his sight back, post-spritz - but rather than progress in the direction of romance, their relationship moves into a best-friendship, which is where we find them still, some years later in New York. He's now a wealthy bachelor who likes to play the field, while she enjoys name-dropping Modigliani and Brontė and wants to settle down, but we know they're truly meant for each other because they both like cake and have bad taste in tableware.
Of course, Tom doesn't realize how much he loves Hannah until she goes off to Scotland and falls in love with Colin (Kevin McKidd), and he's left all alone with an overwhelming number of signs that monogamous love is where it's at - think lots of happy old people in row boats. Colin quickly proposes, a wedding gets scheduled miraculously in just two weeks, and a smitten Hannah then asks Tom to be her... wait for it... maid of honour.
From here, it essentially cribs from the plot of My Best Friend's Wedding, with Tom finding as many ways as possible to make Colin appear unworthy - but in the process of doing so, only makes himself look even more like a selfish putz. Finally, right when audiences are prepared for the predictably banal - but at this point entirely welcome - finale, director Paul Weiland decides to slam on the brakes, shift into reverse and accelerate at high speed into a completely different ending, one which is so ridiculously bad, it's hard to believe anybody - especially a professional screenwriter - could even think to go there.
And, it concludes with a line from Tom that has surely been paraphrased ironically in many a romantic spoof but is spoken with all sincerity here:(Consider yourself warned) "I pride myself on being honest, but there's someone I've been lying to for a very long time ... myself." Not. Even. Kidding.
