Fan Rant: What Could "Made of Honor" Possibly Mean?
Filed under: Romance, New Releases, Sony, Fan Rant
Due to a snafu (my own fault), I did not have a seat at Tuesday night's Iron Man screening in Philadelphia. So while everybody who is anybody hereabouts was giddily watching Tony Stark transform from an arms dealer to an ass-kicking, metal-suited superhero, I was in a different theater one block away watching Patrick Dempsey be a bridesmaid in Made of Honor. There'll be a Cinematical review of the movie on Friday, but for now I'd like to ask a very specific question: what on earth could that title possibly mean?Others who have seen the movie have referred to "Made of Honor" as "a pun," or even an "appalling pun." Okay, but a pun usually involves conflating two words or expressions that make sense in the same context and happen to sound alike. In this case, I only count one. Yes, I get it -- Dempsey plays the best friend of a woman who is getting married, and so she names him her maid of honor. It's funny because he's a guy, but he's the maid of honor. Hahaha! Fantastic. But made of honor? What, like built of honor? Who? Patrick Dempsey? I'm not connecting the dots.
I wondered about this back when I first heard about the movie and when I started seeing trailers, but I figured there must be some explanation, and that I would learn what it is when I saw the film. Surely, Columbia Pictures wouldn't actually release a movie with a completely nonsensical title. Well, now I've seen it, and I get the sense that no explanation is forthcoming. I don't think we ever learn the Dempsey character's full name, but I'm pretty sure it's not "Tom Made." (If it were, I might be even more irritated -- I mean, good God.) There's no mafia subplot. There's not a single mention of "honor" as a concept, or any reason why anyone or anything would be constructed from it. So -- what the hell?
I still insist that there has to be something behind that title that I'm just too dense to see. Maybe it's metaphorical -- in abandoning his womanizing ways, Dempsey finds out what he's "made of," and it happens to be honor? But while he's a lot of things at the end of the film (e.g., an idiot), "honorable" isn't really one of them. If the pun doesn't really work, why did they force it? "Maid of Honor" would have been just as catchy a name, and its meaning would have been far more obvious. No -- I am convinced that there's an explanation that makes the pun work perfectly, and that once I figure out what it is, I will at last appreciate Made of Honor's true genius. Any ideas?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-30-2008 @ 10:47PM
Justin said...
Hilarious.
Reply
4-30-2008 @ 11:16PM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Didn't we see this before with Julia Roberts playing Patrick Dempsey's character?
Reply
4-30-2008 @ 11:24PM
Sam said...
I've been complaining to my friends about the same exact thing. It's clearly a case of people making a pun simply because they could, much like the American Hi-Fi song, "Flavor of the Weak" where they clearly meant "week" throughout the song and simply changed the "e" to an "a" because someone thought it was clever. It seems like titles are getting progressively worse lately. Someone needs to give me a proffessional naming job.
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 8:48AM
AJ said...
Maybe its just a typo?
Reply
4-30-2008 @ 11:26PM
hermitosis said...
I've seriously been wondering about this for a while. Perhaps it's just part of a wicked marketing attempt to get the movie cemented into your mind through re-reading the title over and over looking for a clue.
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 12:01AM
Morteza said...
But you know they didn't stop there. After all, this is "an unbridaled comedy."
There is no god, and this "film" proves it. Take that, Expelled!
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 2:17AM
JFK said...
Thought the same thing- but when I ask these questions my girlfriend just blinks her eyes and then starts watching TV. again.
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 7:33AM
Cincinnati Mike said...
The previous working titles:
Made Me Vomit,
Made Me Bleed from the Eyes, and
Made Me Never Want to Get Married
each carried slight negative connotations.
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 7:50AM
Mike D said...
How about "Made of Dempsey: Hockey's Patrick"
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 8:27AM
theREELaddict said...
It's like a direct-to-DVD sequel I came across the other day. Dr. Dollittle: Tail to the Chief. The movie is about the little girl Dr. Dolittle going to help the President of the US with his pets or something. If ever there was a pun that actually defeated the purpose of a pan (i.e. creating another legitimate meaning), that one was it. Because, well, it doesn't even remotely make sense.
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 9:22AM
kate said...
I assumed it had something to do with the fact that a man would be "made of honor" to be a woman's maid of honor? Like an "it takes a real man" sort of bent.
Either explanation makes it awful.
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 9:34AM
ML said...
Perhaps they are trying to get our attention because the description, of a man attempting to subvert his supposed "best friend"'s wedding because he's decided that he's in love with her and apparently his wishes are more important to him than hers, sound hardly honorable on the face of it. But then again, the way these concepts usually play out don't exactly inspire me to view the film anyway.
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 11:13AM
Christian said...
Perhaps it's some exec's way of saying that MADE is the masculine of MAID.
Reply
5-01-2008 @ 1:21PM
Eugene Novikov said...
This is, in all seriousness, the best explanation I've heard.