CINEMA: Made of Honour

Nearly all romcoms based around weddings pale into significance when held up against the genre standard, Four Weddings And A Funeral, and this is no exception. A kind of Four Weddings lite, Made of Honour even has the gall to have its wedding set in Scotland – mind you, the kind of Scotland that has only ever existed in the minds of Hollywood execs. The plot is not exactly original – self-made man Tom (Patrick Dempsey) has made his money by creating the cardboard sleeves given out in coffee shops to put around plastic takeaway coffee cups. His best friend is Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), with whom he meets everyday. But then Hannah goes on a work trip to Scotland and declares she has fallen in love with and plans to marry a Scottish Laird (Kevin McKidd, well, he wouldn’t be a shepherd now would he).

Hannah wants Tom to be her maid of honour, but the problem is Tom has realised he’s in love with Hannah and doesn’t want to lose her. Cue cute scenes of the Scottish highlands, tossing the caber, drunken hen nights in the local hostelry and much tweed and tweeness. Of course you know exactly what is going to happen, but does it really have to be this predictable? Couldn’t the plot have taken a few detours on the way? Put it this way, that the finale features a dashing horse bursting into a church should tell you all you need to know about the lack of creativity in the storyline.

This is a film that contains absolutely no surprises and will probably even disappoint those who are addicted to weddings.      Dee Pilgrim