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Techtite's DVD Reviews! |
"Not fantastic though certainly not infuriatingly dull, either, for every guy who owes his girlfriend a 'chick flick' date." --from the review ------------- Sidebar :: ------------- The Fast Food Of Date Movies. Yes, romance comedies like this are the typical "fast food" style offering of the romance comedy world. Metaphorically speaking: yes you'd be better off with healthier food. No; that doesn't make it less fun when you eat your favorite fast food. That's Made of Honor to a "T." Nobody would ever mistake Dustin Hoffman for a woman, though Tootsie was hilarious. Nobody would ever believe a hooker could look like Julia Roberts, nor would said hooker be whisked off her feet by Richard Gere, though that didn't stop Pretty Woman from becoming box office gold. Yeah; I know this is an unfair comparison, because Made of Honor will hardly be a box office bonanza. Yet when people complain about how silly the movie is: do I really have to remind them it's a comedy? Just have fun! The Dempsey Paradox. It's been said before, though I never said it in a review, so why not print it for once? It's always interesting to see a movie with Dempsey in the romantic lead, for anyone who remembers him as the teenage "nerd" in about half a dozen teenybopper flicks of the late 80's and early 90's. Man; what a strong marriage and fatherhood can do for a guy's confidence, eh? Yeah it's been said a lot already. I just wanted to say it again...
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Made of Honor
A Review by TechtiteAs always, a review of The Show and the DVD extras. The Film Review: It must be hard to make films during the pre-summer season. Try too hard to reinvent the wheel and you annoy people, because they were expecting a simpler movie. Conversely, if you make your movie into a cookie-cutter popcorn flick, the critics berate you for it. The best idea is somewhere in between: take a typical movie formula, change it just a little bit, and hope everyone loved the movies your film ripped off saluted. In this case, you have a movie that might as well be titled My Best Friend's Wedding Where 27 Dresses Weren't Needed Because The Maid of Honor Is a Dude. Well...that's original, isn't it? Well to me it was. It was surprisingly entertaining as well.The premise is something straight out of romance comedy fairy tales. Tom (Patrick Dempsey) is the typical guy with very slow romantic reflexes, who just now realized his female friend of 10 years, Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) is a total hottie. The bad news: he decides to tell her as soon as she returns from a business trip overseas...only to have her surprise him with news of her engagement to Colin (Kevin McKidd). In the real world: Tom blew it. Not in movies like this, however. Go get her, Tom! Let's jump to the reason for the movie title: Hannah wants Tom to be her Maid of Honor. It's the sort of romantic comedy concept that's best to not think about too harshly. Yes, there's little chance Colin would allow his bride to choose a dude as her maid of honor. Nor would the bride's closest female friends accept a guy as Maid of Honor. This is immaterial. It's a romantic comedy, after all. Whether the premise makes any sense in the real world is about as important as someone insisting that Star Wars is illogical because there's no sound in space. Well, yeah, there's no sound in space, though listen to a few minutes of John Williams' excellent orchestral score, and that reality check flies out the window. In this case you have a romantic comedy starring the adorable Monaghan (Mission Impossible 3), Dempsey (Grey's Anatomy) and Kevin McKidd, who sci-fi buffs will remember from the vastly under-appreciated time travel series last fall, "Journeyman." When looking for cute love triangles, who needs logic? The rest of the story goes like this: Tom agrees to be maid of honor, though only so he can attempt to sabotage the wedding, moment by moment, and perhaps get Hannah to fall in love with him along the way. If this sounds like a story with an obvious ending: I'm pleased to tell you that you're right. This is a "spoiler" only to the people who thought about this story too hard. Yes, many a romantic comedy tries to be "novel" and surprise you with a dimwitted twist at the end, where the lovers don't stay together, just for shock value nonsense. There's only one word for such romances: box office disasters. In a crazy world, it's actually good news when I tell you this story is predictable...though in a very fun way. The end result is a sort of "leave your mind at home" date movie. In fact; it is the parts of the movie that are too realistic that drag the film down. For one: Colin is hardly a bad catch. This is perhaps the one aspect of the story where "it's only a movie" doesn't quite cut it. Didn't she love Colin at all? So basically the idea is that she agreed to marry Colin because it just felt right at the time. That's not as easy to accept as, say, Hannah going lingerie shopping with Tom. Yeah, see; she sees Tom as a platonic friend who'd be the best person to tell her what looks sexy on her, like lingerie. That's easily shrugged off, however, because it's a funny moment of the movie, no matter how whimsical. The fact Colin is a nice guy who's inevitably going to be totally heartbroken? That's not as easily shrugged off. I still liked this movie enough to recommend it. Why? Because I'm a guy and this "chick flick" was enjoyable to watch, mostly thanks to the adorable Monaghan, and some really funny moments. If you are a woman and you want your relationship to work: suggest Made of Honor as your next date movie. If you're a guy and you owe your girlfriend a "chick flick" date: you can do much worse than Made of Honor. It's hardly Shakespearean, and yet it will make for a fun date movie for both sexes...and in a world filled with sexist and quasi-sexist movies, that is rarer than you might think. The DVD Review: Not much to say for this one aside from the obligatory director's commentary. That's a shame because a movie like this would seemingly have had a bunch of deleted scenes and one whale of a blooper reel, and a nice featurette as well. Apparently; the movie didn't do well enough to warrant such extras.
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