In 1986, John Hughes wrote Pretty In Pink,
a high-school romantic comedy featuring a love triangle between a girl from the
wrong side of the tracks, her long-smitten best friend, and a handsome rich
kid. It worked so well that he essentially wrote it again with the genders
reversed, and called it Some Kind Of Wonderful. Cheap? Maybe. You could
simply call it consistency. But what do you call it when someone pulls a gender
reversal on someone else's movie? If that movie is My Best Friend's Wedding, you call it Made Of
Honor.
Originality is often
overrated anyway, but director Paul Weiland (City Slickers II: The Legend Of
Curly's Gold, Leonard Part 6),
working from a script by newcomer Adam Sztykiel and the generally reliable team
of Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, doesn't offer much compensation for his lack
thereof. Everyone hits the notes to a tune they, and the audience, already know
all too well.
Following the same
rhythms, Patrick Dempsey steps into the Julia Roberts role, playing a perennial
bachelor who establishes elaborate rules when it comes to dating, but lets his
guard down when it comes to his longtime platonic best friend, Michelle
Monaghan. When Monaghan leaves for a work trip to Scotland, Dempsey realizes
she makes him happy in a way an endless string of one-night stands with
gorgeous women never could. But when she returns with a fiancé (Rome's Kevin McKidd), Dempsey
has to serve as the "maid" of honor at, er, his best friend's wedding.
It's possible to do good
work in such rote surroundings. Sydney Pollack, for instance, has some nice
scenes as Dempsey's oft-divorced father. But it's also possible to do work
that's a little too good for the material. In films like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Gone Baby Gone, Monaghan has come into
her own as a reliably fine actress. Here, she wears the expression of a woman
who's had her heart broken many times over, but keeps finding a way to put it
back together. It's touching work that makes Dempsey's plastic sincerity look
as thin as the film's posters. It's telling that he's followed by a string of
sidekicks apparently created to make him less bland by comparison. This is how
Kadeem Hardison stays employed.