5 Lessons Learned from “Made of Honor”

As a married man, I’ve acquired a lot of wisdom about maintaining a good relationship with the opposite sex. Of these indispensable morsels, picking the right rom com is of the highest importance. As much as you wish it weren’t so, you’re going to have to watch them.  So you might as well learn how to pick the right ones. This week, I made an egregious error and added the abysmal “Made of Honor” to our Queue because we hadn’t watched a chick flick in awhile and I was attempting to be proactive. Big mistake.

Honestly, I can’t overstate how intolerable this movie was. But in an attempt to wring some redeeming value out of it, I have 5 of the lessons I learned watching this movie:

1. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were the most popular Halloween costumes of 1998. So much so that you can base your entire backstory on this fact and assume it will connect with your audience. Every writer knows that nothing appeals to the rom com crowd like cheap BJ jokes that were stale even in the era in which they were suppoed to take place.

2. “The Coffee Collar” is a brilliant idea invented by a jackass in college, who gets 10 cents for each one purchased. Not only do I have a difficult time believing those things even cost 10 cents each, I also don’t buy that one man would have a monopoly on the world’s supply. Making your main character a rich inventor is synonymous with lazy writing anyway, but when you add the fact they only offer a half-hearted explanation it’s even worse. 

3. True love is being afraid of dying alone. In a classic example of only wanting something that someone else has, Patrick Dempsey’s character only realizes he loves his best friend when she decides to marry someone else. Up until that point she was just part of your plan to bang random women and still get the emotional support of being loved, without actually having to invest anything. How thoughtful of his totally unredeemable and unrelatable character. I’m sure they live happily ever after… even though it was another shotgun wedding.

4. Each woman has a unique marriage expiration date. It’s kinda like a modern Cinderella. If a woman isn’t married by the time she’s a predetermined age, she immediately turns into ash when the clock strikes midnight after her birthday. If that’s not true, there is no other reason the “sensible” female protagonist rushes into marrying someone in the movie twice. Except for lazy writing.

5. Divorce is funny. When you use serial divorce as comic relief… you’re using serial divorce as comic relief. HAHAHA! LOL!! ROTFL-copter!!!!