Tom (Patrick Dempsey, right) secretly pines for his best friend, Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), who is engaged to another man in Made of Honor. (Sony Pictures)

I once had a colleague who liked to share his movie reviews with the office every Monday morning. They always went like this: “I liked that movie better the first time — when it was called Prizzi’s Honor!” Or Jaws, or Star Wars, or Pretty Woman. You get the extremely irritating picture.

What I always marveled at — besides the sheer persistence of this wannabe Rob Schneider’s life-is-an-SNL-skit behaviour (I Liked It Better Guy!) — was how my colleague was so genuinely angered by the repetitive, generic qualities of films not made by Gus Van Sant. I don’t mind a little familiarity; movies meet, by nature, a set of comforting expectations about darkness and solitude and vicarious suffering and pleasure, particularly when they sit over on the product side of the art-vs.-diversion fence. Movies have always been mass entertainment, and I, one of the masses, need an escape from time to time, and often the best place to hide is in a photocopy.

And yet, as I walked out of the new romantic comedy Made of Honor, I was hoping to run into ILIB Guy, just so I could say: “I liked it better the first time — when it was called My Best Friend’s Wedding!” I mean, there are the predictable pleasures of a genre, and then there’s laziness, and possibly plagiarism.

Grey’s Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey plays (Julia Roberts playing) the best friend of the impossibly wonderful, yet never pursued, college chum played by Michelle Monaghan (previously played by Dermot Mulroney). Dempsey is named Tom, as in tomcat, an Alfie figure who made a mint selling coffee cuffs, those little cardboard hand-savers that go around Starbucks cups. Now he appears jobless, tooling around New York in a Porsche — this seems like an L.A. screenwriter’s misreading of the city; NY Mr. Bigs tool around in a car service — and sleeping with a cornucopia of women who resemble reality-show contestants.

But on Sundays, Tom gets together with his art-restorer best friend, Hannah (Monaghan), and they wander the city like Harry and Sally, eating cake and shopping for antiques, exchanging witticisms and pretending not to be perfect for each other. This part of the film works pretty well: the city is romantic and falsely clean; the clothes and furniture trigger our inner shopper; the bit players are benignly wacky.

When Hannah takes a lengthy work trip to Scotland, the BFFs’ cell phones can’t find each other, and Tom begins to realize what he’s missing. Sydney Pollack, as Tom’s much-married father — he’s currently negotiating a sixth wedding — lectures his son on love. Apparently inured to irony, Tom is inspired to make a move on Hannah. But when she returns, it’s on the arm of a hunky fiancé, a likeable Scottish Duke and scotch baron named Colin (Kevin McKidd, played in My Best Friend’s Wedding by Cameron Diaz). Several not unfunny pratfalls ensue, as Tom begins to lose his cool and locate a little vulnerability behind his hunk veneer.

Tom agrees to be Hannah's maid of honour, but only so he can woo the bride-to-be himself. (Sony Pictures)

Director Paul Weiland tries to make something of the gender inversion he’s been handed, showing Tom getting in touch with his feminine side as he agrees to be Hannah’s maid of honour, hoping to steal her away. It’s mildly interesting to see a man in the position of yearning from afar, and also to watch Dempsey’s fusty metrosexual vibe melt into something more befuddled. But I’m not sure the idea of a guy wrapping candles and bath bombs for a bridal shower is inherently hilarious anymore. Boy-at-a-wedding is a long, retro gag that distracts from the chemistry between the couple we’re supposed to be rooting for.

When the film moves to Scotland, the shenanigans get sillier — kilt jokes; haggis jokes, etc. — and the adult energy goes poof. Dempsey, aiming for the big crossover from TV to film, doesn’t exactly go for the gusto; he’s just too cool a cucumber to be truly vulnerable. Monaghan, on the other hand, has a bit of the young Kathleen Turner in her; she’s vibrant and sexy and deserving of something (a movie) and someone (Dermot Mulroney?) better. If I knew how, I’d make a Youtube mashup of Made of Honor and My Best Friend’s Wedding in which Monaghan ends up with Dermot Mulroney, leaving Cameron Diaz for Patrick Dempsey, and Julia Roberts alone — I liked that best the first time.

Made of Honor opens May 2.

Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca.