{"id":7840,"date":"2010-06-01T07:19:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-31T23:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=7840"},"modified":"2018-03-14T10:47:20","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T02:47:20","slug":"made-of-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/06\/01\/made-of-honor\/","title":{"rendered":"Made of Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px; display: inline; border-width: 0px;\" title=\"blog-moh-01\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/blogmoh01.jpg\" alt=\"blog-moh-01\" width=\"202\" height=\"300\" align=\"right\" border=\"0\" \/> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0866439\/\">Made of Honor<\/a><\/em> \u2013 on HD (2008). Laugh if you will&#8230; but the real reason why I picked up <em>Made of Honor<\/em> &#8211; a chick flick starring Patrick &#8216;McDreamy&#8217; Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan &#8211; is because it was going for dirt-cheap on Blu-ray.<\/p>\n<p>Dempsey plays Tom Bailey, a Don Juan and conqueror of women virtue. His best friend is Hannah, played by starry-eyed Michelle Monaghan, whom he met in a chance encounter at college while trying to bed her roommate.<\/p>\n<p>Tom doesn&#8217;t realize the real depth of his feelings for Hannah &#8211; which so far have always seem platonic &#8211; until the latter takes off to Scotland in a business trip. Tom misses her when she&#8217;s away and only then does he realize that he&#8217;s in love with her. He intends to let Hannah know when she comes back&#8230; only that she returns engaged to a young Scottish nobleman, Colin, played for laughs by Kevin McKidd. Spurred on by his well-intentioned brotherly buddies, he tries to sabotage their coming marriage by trying to dig up dirt on Colin.<\/p>\n<p>From the onset, the film is sort of like <em>My Best Friend&#8217;s Wedding<\/em>, if from a guy&#8217;s point of view this time.\u00a0 The premise has been done before, and the film itself plays it terrifically safe too. At the expense of spoiling <em>Made of Honor<\/em> for those who haven&#8217;t seen it, the film sticks to the tried-and-true if formulaic story arcs of setup, conflict then happy resolution.<\/p>\n<p>So why would you want to watch this film then knowing full well how it&#8217;s going to turn out? Well, for the two actors. I imagine women viewers would watch this for Dempsey, and for us guys, the lovely Monaghan. The two have great chemistry onscreen that&#8217;s driven by their lively banter, and it&#8217;s refreshing to watch a character like Hannah who despite possessing full awareness of Tom&#8217;s liaisons, never seeks to judge him.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s humor to be had too, though not all of it work. The slapstick bits (e.g. of Tom in a restaurant) don&#8217;t, but the ones involving him comparing himself to Colin absolutely do. The latter is a paragon of virtue, a quick learner and not just physically imposing in height (there&#8217;s a hilarious scene involving &#8216;equipment&#8217; sizes in the bath).<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s also a subplot sandwiched in the film about Hannah&#8217;s three bridesmaids, one of whom was dumped by Tom himself after a fling. That didn&#8217;t work well and felt as though time spent in those scenes should had been put back towards the real star of the film &#8211; the relationship between Tom and Hannah. As a bonus, you also get lovely camera pans of the highlands &#8211; enough to have made Ling want to tour Scotland.:)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p>So, not perfect. Saddled with a not very surprising story, but saved by two attractive leads. It&#8217;s not quite near my favorite group of romantic flicks &#8211; which still comprise just <em>Sleepless in Seattle, The American President <\/em>and <em>Just Like Heaven<\/em> &#8211; but still a pleasant way to spend 101 minutes of your time.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/star10.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/star10.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/star10.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/blankstar4_thumb.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/blankstar4_thumb.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Made of Honor \u2013 on HD (2008). Laugh if you will&#8230; but the real reason why I picked up Made of Honor &#8211; a chick flick starring Patrick &#8216;McDreamy&#8217; Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan &#8211; is because it was going for<\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-read-more\"><a class=\"read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/06\/01\/made-of-honor\/\">Read More<span class=\"cleanwp-sr-only\">  Made of Honor<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-entertainment","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}