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Made Of Honour (12A) ***
Womaniser Patrick Dempsey gets that loving feeling for his soon-to-be-married best friend in so-so rom-com
How soon is too soon when it comes to a remake? Two years? Five years? Ten?
Made Of Honour is a gender-reversed revamp of the 1997 romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding, about a bed-hopping, commitment-shy 30-something who realises, almost too late, that he is in love with the only woman he hasn't slept with.
Invariably, this emotional lightning bolt strikes at the precise moment she is preparing to walk up the aisle... with another man.
Paul Weiland's film doesn't stray far too far from the original, except perhaps for the climactic nuptials set against the breathtaking loch-side setting of Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye.
A Highland Games sequence is a good excuse to dress leading man Patrick Dempsey in a most revealing mini-kilt as he struggles to get to grips with the traditional tests of strength and skill.
"A tree? We're tossing a tree!" he gasps, staring dumbfounded at a caber.
Dempsey plies his natural charm to sidestep obvious shortcomings in the script - weak characterisation, a lack of dramatic tension - and win our sympathy.
Luckily for him, his rival for the heroine's affections is devoid of personality and thinks the ultimate romantic gesture is a rousing chorus of the traditional song "Love Is Like A Rose".
Och aye the no, no, no!
Obscenely wealthy playboy Tom (Dempsey) ricochets from one fling to the next without any thoughts of commitment.
Best friend Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) despairs at his bed-hopping antics, especially since she has secretly loved him since they were at university.
Realising Tom will never reciprocate her feelings, Hannah leaves for a six-week business trip to Scotland, where she falls for and agrees to marry Colin McMurray (Kevin McKidd), whose family is regarded as local royalty.
During the trip, Tom realises that he cannot live without Hannah.
To add to Tom's woes, she asks him to be the maid of honour, working alongside bickering bridesmaids Melissa, Whitney and Hilary to ensure her big day passes without a hitch.
Made Of Honour is as predictable as an unseemly scrabble for the bride's bouquet, intensifying Tom's misery until he is forced to tell Hannah, "I can't be your maid of honour. I can't give you away".
Dempsey is adorable while Monaghan makes the most of her underwritten role, seeing the niggling flaws in her husband-to-be just before the biggest day of her life.
McKidd is woefully short-changed but at least does his countrymen proud in swathes of tartan with a rousing display in the Braemar Stone throw.
Running gags about Tom being gay and Grandma Pearl's glow in the dark necklace lose their lustre well before the congregation rises for the wedding march.
Fans of the leading man from Grey's Anatomy will undoubtedly swoon "I do" to every contrivance.
Everyone else should take Made Of Honour with a generous pinch of confetti.
RATING 3/5
Watch the trailer HERE
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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