MADE OF HONOR (Rated PG-13)

Easily dismissed as just one more chick flick in a recent spate of similar efforts, “Made of Honor” puts a rather obvious spin on the formulaic romantic comedy, even though subversively tilting its action to a male point of view.

To be sure, any film geared to a wedding ceremony is almost certainly a lure to the female audience, unless of course that film stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as freeloading bachelors.

This time around, the handsome Patrick Dempsey, apparently called McDreamy for his role in TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” is the pivotal character in the oddly titular role. Women may not mind that he’s a cad.

In a strange role reversal, Dempsey’s Tom is introduced at the film’s beginning a decade ago as the campus Lothario, eager to bed every coed with the zeal of an oversexed frat boy. Crawling under the covers with a college girl in a case of mistaken identity, Tom gets his comeuppance from an unwilling partner, Michelle Monaghan’s Hannah, a sober-minded individual who will not be randomly seduced by a drunken partygoer.

Oddly enough, Tom and Hannah manage to become best friends, a platonic relationship that has the feel of a close bond between brother and sister. Fast forwarding to the present day, Tom and Hannah spend time together in New York City as friends supporting each other. It seems like a one-sided affair, with Tom usually confessing his unbendable rules of dating, such as not having two consecutive dates or calling a potential date within 24 hours of a chance encounter.

Tom’s social life is revealed as a revolving door of sexual conquests, where impossibly beautiful women practically fling themselves at his feet. At this point, the film is more like a male fantasy, because real life is unlike that, even for the most adept womanizers.

For reasons unexplained, Tom has more magnetism and sex appeal than James Bond and has had more bedroom triumphs than Wilt Chamberlain. If he kept a little black book, it would be the size of a Manhattan telephone directory. In his rare spare time, Tom hangs out with a bunch of buddies who, with the exception of the obligatory married guy (Kadeem Hardison), would be hard-pressed to get any date on a Saturday night.

What Tom, in his state of arrested development, has failed to realize is that the girl of his dreams has been the one constant in his life. When Hannah goes overseas to Scotland on a six-week business trip, it dawns on this slow learner that his life is empty without her.

He knows he doesn’t want to end up like his father (Sydney Pollack), who’s marrying his sixth trophy wife while fully realizing that a pre-nuptial agreement is certain to be tested in relatively short order. In between the usual trysts, he mopes around because Hannah is gone, calling her often in the middle of the night. He resolves to reveal his true feelings upon her return, intending to propose matrimony.

Hannah’s eventual homecoming is fraught with a great surprise, but only to Tom. Anyone else would see this disaster coming, when Hannah announces that she’s engaged to a handsome and wealthy Scotsman, heir to the family’s distillery business. The aristocratic Colin McMurray (Kevin McKidd) lives in a castle on a scenic lake. He’s also tremendously athletic, almost too good to be true.

Tom can’t bear the thought of losing Hannah, especially when she plans to move overseas. When Hannah asks Tom to be her “maid of honor,” he reluctantly agrees to fill this curious role, expecting his best chance to sabotage the wedding is from within.

Naturally, Hannah’s girlfriends are aghast at Tom’s selection for the matrimonial honor. One of these friends harbors a bitter resentment of a one-night stand gone horribly wrong, and she goes to great lengths to disrupt Tom’s essential role of bridal planner.

Meanwhile, Tom’s basketball-playing buddies constantly razz him, while offering some misguided advice. Culture shock sets in when Tom and the wedding party end up in Scotland, and the snooty McMurray clan is somewhat aghast at Tom’s gender-bending role. There’s even an ongoing gag about a clueless grandmother mistaking a sex toy for a necklace.

“Made of Honor” is so thoroughly predictable that it is virtually impossible to find anything surprising or even remotely ingenious. That’s not to say there aren’t some funny things happening, or that some of dialogue isn’t zippy and humorous.

The breezy quality of the comedy on display probably has much to do with the nice chemistry between Tom Dempsey and Michelle Monaghan, both of them likable even though only one has the heart and character worthy of that positive trait.

DVD RELEASE UPDATE

We can use this space to report on the odd and strange in the film business.

You can’t get much weirder than “Teeth,” a story galvanized by the vagina dentata mythology in which a young girl develops choppers in the most unexpected place.

A jaw-dropping horror film (to coin a gruesome phrase), “Teeth” stars newcomer Jess Weixler and John Hensley in a twisted tale of female empowerment, which the Hollywood Reporter called “the most alarming cautionary tale for men,” a description that one would be hard-pressed to improve upon when you consider “Fatal Attraction” so greatly unnerved the male audience.

The teenage star is so innocent that she is not even aware of her own basic bodily functions, and discovers quite by accident that she is anatomically very unique. Watch this DVD at your own peril.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

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