Made of Honor

American men are confused.

Between the 19th Amendment and Women’s lib, the Pussycat Dolls and Hillary Clinton, American men have found themselves MIA in the battle of the sexes. Encouraged to be masculine but not chauvinists, appreciative but not lewd, respectful but pro-active, the American male is, understandably, baffled.

Tom Bailey, the main character in Paul Weiland’s Made of Honor, is a confused American man. Tom deals with his confusion by compartmentalizing.

He has consistent sex but never with the same woman consistently. He exercises his manly banter over basketball with the guys. He doesn’t date or deal in double standards. He is who he says he is. He wants what he says he wants. For a college Halloween she-bang, Tom came as Clinton and chased only the Monicas.

That’s how he met Hannah, roommate to a boozy Lewinsky look-alike.

Hannah becomes Tom’s friend that is a girl. He practices no restraint around her and he makes no pretensions to be an educated, liberal or well-meaning modern man. He relishes all his ugly affairs under her tolerant and amused smile. Tom keeps his pillow talk separate from his people talk.

Flash forward to adult post-college prosperity: Tom is the financially fortunate inventor of the coffee sleeve and Hannah is a brilliant art curator for the New York Met. Hannah and Tom meet, eat, laugh, and talk for hours. Each Sunday they go for a traditional afternoon walk in Central Park. Then Tom goes home with one of his women, calling Hannah to laugh about something funny over bagels the next morning.

Hannah, meanwhile, suspects that she is slowly dieing in a friendship with a man to whom she is secretly sexually attracted. While Tom sees the two going on together, years of routine Sundays stretching skyward, Hannah sees them growing old together, Tom banging babe after babe while she goes home alone to a cat and late night TV.

Enter the Scottish laird, Kevin McKid, played by the towering Colin McMurray. He is a Duke from the Highlands of Scotland, and he rides to Hannah’s rescue in a scene straight out of a Danielle Steel bestseller. Hannah is smitten, Tom is panicked, and the wedding is less than a month away.

Tom realizes that the life he believed was perfect in its predictability may be gone for good. His basketball buddies rally to his cause as they coach him into becoming the best maid of honor that Hannah could hope for. The plan is to show her that he’s changed, that he can commit, and that really, he’s the man she’s been waiting for—a theme that Hannah reveals is all too true and all too tragic.

Because while Hannah can love the proven player Tom as a best friend, she doesn’t want to throw away a guarantee of future matrimonial bliss with the continentally conservative Laird McKid in the vain hope of happiness with a well-known heartbreaker.

Tom is surprised to learn that women can compartmentalize too. Isn’t that why Ingrid got on the plane in Casablanca, leaving Humphrey Bogart to drink alone in a local Moroccan dive save for Sam, the piano-man?

The story may be simple, but Made of Honor is made to order for the modern generation. Today, self-help and self-achievement stories thrive on the idea of the uncluttered and rational individual. Success is as simple as the multimillion-dollar coffee sleeve. Make your plan and stick to it. Recognize what moves you closer towards your objectives and avoid what drags you farther away. Learn to analyze art for its romantic influences, crafted by expert handsc so that you know what attracts the eye and why. Don’t be fooled into buying by the overall effect; break each experience down to its elements in order to master the experience rather than let experience master you.

If organization is the key to success in the boardroom—why not in the bedroom? Separate the lust from the love, the commitment from the confinement, and the heartache from the heartbreak. Tom and Hannah have come by their compartmentalized lives honestly; the movie leads an audience to wonder if in our own carefully constructed lives, we have perhaps learned to separate the magic of the cinema from sore reality a little too successfully. Switch Hannah or Tom with one of us, and would we give up our pretty presents for future possibilities?

Preview here.