Made of Honor

Made of Honor is a chick-flick turned upside down, because much of the story is told from a male perspective.

It is, and isn't, an old-fashioned romantic-comedy setup.

Made of Honor is a nice cookie-cutter comedy, no more and no less, but Dempsey, with his relaxed charm, and Monaghan, with her soft and peachy sensual spark, rise to the challenge of making friendship look like the wellspring of true love.

Made of Honor, like a wedding reception buffet of mints and mixed nuts when you were expecting shrimp cocktail and a chocolate fountain, has none of that.

If you find yourself aching for white dresses and champagne flutes combined with some corny romantic daring-do involving lovely, wealthy people, Made of Honor should fit the bill.

Made of Honor offers a pleasantly amusing but not particularly memorable trip down the aisle.

Just what you'd expect: wedding-ritual jokes, competitive jealousy jokes, witchy bridesmaid jokes. Even the Scottish jokes about kilts, haggis, bagpipes and that thick brogue are hit-and-miss predictable.

Made of Honor is My Best Friend's Wedding by way of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Made of Honor glides on an appealing, attractive cast led by Patrick Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan but stumbles at the end and resorts to some pratfalls for laughs.

Maybe because Dempsey is universally known as McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy the movie has the coziness of a TV show. Dempsey has lots of toothy charm, and it's only magnified on the big screen.

With the exception of a handful of laugh-out-loud moments, Dempsey's frequent shirtlessness is the film's main appeal. The rest is as unpalatable as stale wedding cake.

Enough major differences -- and the charming leads -- help Made of Honor overcome obvious comparisons to the still-superior My Best Friend's Wedding.

It starts out as a tribute to When Harry Met Sally... and steadily backslides toward a less-than-honorable My Best Friend's Wedding remake.

There aren’t many surprise moments in this bright, agreeable film which closely follows the cookie-cutter rules of most wedding movies right down to the “who will get the bride?” moment at the end.

It's touching work that makes Dempsey's plastic sincerity look as thin as the film's posters.

You may wish, however, that Made of Honor had given its stars more of interest to occupy their time. And ours.

Made of Honor is to comedy what eloping is to marriage: There's nothing fancy about either. They just get the job done.

How you feel about Made of Honor depends on how you feel about Dempsey. If you like Grey's Dr. McDreamy, you'll like Tom and the movie.

Dempsey’s comic timing couldn’t be better, and he looks great in and out of bed. But he’s undone by a character that remains fairly despicable.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers add nothing new, funnier or more engaging to this rehash of friend-turned-lover plot to justify trotting this story out again.

The charismatic Monaghan comes off well, but the rest of the movie is a disappointment, even by romantic-comedy standards.

Its debts to both When Harry Met Sally and My Best Friend's Wedding are considerable.

Although Made of Honor is your run-of-the-mill rom-com guys will dread being dragged to, it is slightly elevated by an appealing Michelle Monaghan.

It’s hard to sympathize with characters who bear no resemblance to any existing member of the human species, although, as is typical with this kind of movie, the cast brings a commitment the material doesn’t deserve.

The unimaginative script keeps things rolling in an inevitable direction, and the film's target audience likely will be satisfied.

Its general lack of originality brings it up short of other flawed romantic comedies that still managed to surprise me.

Go ahead and nap during the ending -- it's really stupid and totally foreseeable. Julia Roberts called; she wants her plot back.

The script, so feeble it doesn't even let us know what the character does for a living, is poorly tailored to Dempsey's strengths, and he seems so uncomfortable in the role that he's often painful to watch.

Often enjoyable but never as good as the ones it's stealing from.

Subtle reactions are illegal in a film like this. The comedy is so weak that it has to be broad.

Decades ago, Made of Honor would have been a perfect vehicle for Cary Grant.

From canned situations to cliched supporting characters, this film is kind of like that annoying person you know who thinks he’s a laugh riot, but he’s really not.

The story feels so much like a retread, you could swear you'd seen it before. It might as well be called My Best Friend's Scottish Wedding.

In trying to make Made of Honor appeal to as many people as possible, the filmmakers have ended up with a film that doesn't really appeal to anyone.

The screenplay recycles tired clichés and director Paul Weiland contentedly settles on the easiest joke.

The proceedings strive hard to charm but rarely succeed.

Swap the girls for the boys and you've got My Best Friend's Wedding all over again. But the first time is always the best, isn't it?

In the case of Made of Honor, the lame-brained label is wholly and accurately reflective of the product within.

Made of Honor is a retread -- My Best Friend's Wedding with the genders reversed and the brains removed.

Dempsey stars in a wedding-centric romantic comedy called 27 Dresses. Sorry, My Best Friend's Wedding. Sorry, Made of Honor. That's it. Made of Honor.

The wait for some film to come along and break the mold will have to continue a little longer, because Made of Honor brings nothing new to the genre.

This strained romantic comedy is a "chick flick" for dudes, written by Neanderthals.

Do yourself a favor: Send "regrets" to this affair, and rent My Best Friend's Wedding again, or even 27 Dresses.

Made of Honor pins its hopes on a character who acts utterly without honor and on an actor who has only two settings -- sensitive or smarmy.

Made of Honor is such a copy of a copy of a copy that the template's charms are barely distinguishable.

If we held a competition among Grey's Anatomy stars to evaluate who made the best adult romantic comedy in recent memory, Katherine Heigl (27 Dresses) would crush Patrick Dempsey under her stilettos without even breaking a sweat.

By the end, the fact that only 101 minutes have gone by comes as a surprise. Made of Honor feels like a 130-minute picture.

How do I loathe the soul-crushingly predictable Made of Honor? Let me count the ways.

The characters in Made of Honor are supposed to be in their 30s, but they're written like high schoolers, so we don't know whether they should be worrying about Student Council elections or prostate exams.

The writing team who scripted Made of Honor has among their previous writing credits Surviving Christmas, Josie and the Pussycats and The Flintstones in Las Vegas, embarrassments one and all. Made of Honor is not going to improve their résumé.

When Harry and Sally went to see My Best Friend's Wedding, they could have written a funnier, more original script in the time it takes to eat a box of Milk Duds.