The summer of 2008 broke history, and rebuilt it.
America suffered through a bitter presidential election on the road to a globewrecking financial crisis.
In theaters, cinematic generations were rising and falling.
Credit: Everett Collection (2)
So much depends upon rich, powerful, oversexed misogynists.
They cause so many problems, true.
But here’s a question you could ask: Can they also solve those problems they cause?
Dramatic pause:Or was it?
InMade of Honor, Patrick Dempsey plays Tom, a guy who has it all.
In college, he invented the “coffee collar,” the cardboard sleeve for coffee on the go.
This made him a millionaire, but he wasn’t poor before.
His father is a quintuple-divorce.
(Or is it sextuple?
Sex, LOL.)
The negotiation comes down to: How often do theyhave toper week?
“Have to” what?
(Sex, LOL.)
Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark was also, most immediately, a rich bro with daddy issues.
That’s how Dad did it.
That’s how America does it."
Funny stuff, when the point was establishing Tony Stark’s douchebag credentials.
(And you have to briefly erase the following decade of continuity here, I think, all warsCivilorInfinity.
Tony and Tom have another thing in common.
These women: They never stop!
Tom walks into Starbucks, and a woman writes her number on his coffee cup.
He sits down, the woman at the next table smiles at him.
This one woman hates him so much that she gets drunk and throws herself at him.
Another woman loves him so much, she builds a website about him, AllThingsTom.org.
“Her last blog was a two-page description of my face,” Tom tells us.
(The blogger stalker has glasses, too, because the year is 2008 and nerds do computers.)
How irrepressible is he, our Tom?
Tom:“I didn’t know she spoke English!”
Which is not the only line that sounds admissible in court.Made of Honoris a lazy movie.
Cads who never call back?
But they are redeemed by the devotion of one single trusted person.
They are our mens' confessors, though more accurate to call them enablers.
You know from the first minute where these men are going with these women.
So you could describe these blurred lines as “documentary accuracy.”
The way Tom meets Hannah is much weirder.
We open on a flashback to 1998, at Cornell.
Half the women at the party are dressed as Monica Lewinsky.
I think my theater audience groaned.)
But Tom’s looking for one special Monica.
She gave him directions.
He goes upstairs, walks into a dark dorm room.
He takes off his clothes, and slides into bed next to a sleeping woman.
Whoisn’tthe woman he thought it was it’s Hannah!
Gender-swapping a story to give more prominence to the male characters: In some ineffable way, thiswasthe 2000s.
Circa 2008, by obvious comparison, the Superhero Movie was in genre ascension.
It is more convincingly the story of a bad man becoming better.
It’s convincing, which doesn’t equal honest.
By the film’s end, Tony’s fixed all the problems that his company caused.
The obvious follow-up question in any real-world scenario would be: What problems will they cause next?
Tom doesn’t really learn any lessons.
Actual dialogue: “Did he just say he’smaidof honor?
He’s abloke!”
But he throws a pretty good bridal shower.
The world loves him!
And yet, he must change.
“Maybe there’s more to life than just sleeping around,” he says early on.
“I need to destroy the wedding from within,” he says.
His bros encourage him, and together they chant: “Steal the bride!
Steal the bride!”
I know, I know, romcom behavior, secretly sociopathic: Old joke.
ButMade of Honorfeels special to me, an important snapshot.
It throws out any sincere ideals of romantic love.
Briefly, Tom considers letting his best friend get married.
He quotes that old line: “When you love something, you have to let it go.”
“Said by a p-,” his dad responds.
Didn’t Bogie put his love on the plane for the greater good?
“P-,” says Tom Senior, “Bigp-.”
A dumb joke, but resonant in a dumb movie.
No such thing as old-fashioned values, says the Manhattan business millionaire, already working on his next divorce.
Hannah’s a distant figure in the movie.
Not Michelle Monaghan’s fault: Character and actress look trapped.
The memories start to flow.
“I miss Dad so much,” says Hannah.
Even her dead dad loves Tom!
Moments like that, the fog lifts.
Meanwhile, her relationship with Colin (Kevin McKidd) is lousy with century-old cliches of courtly love.
They met six weeks ago, they’re engagement lasts two weeks.
They barely know each other: She is shocked,shocked, to discover he enjoys hunting.
In the end, the prophecy of Hannah’s father has come true.
The last scene ofMade of Honoris in the marital bed.
“Oh, Monica,” he whispers to his wife.
“Oh, Bill,” she whispers back, captured.
