It starts out as a tribute to "When Harry Met Sally ..." and steadily backslides toward a less-than-honorable "My Best Friend's Wedding" remake.

Fortunately, "Made of Honor," a star vehicle for Patrick "McDreamy" Dempsey, earns enough good will in a long, clever and sexy opening act to carry to through to an ending that we don't necessarily guess because it seems to lack enough of that last word in the title: "honor."

Tom met Hannah at Cornell in 1998, at a Clinton-era Halloween party that saw him wearing a President Bill mask and confusing her with his latest "Monica."

And Hannah (Michelle Monaghan) wasn't having it, or him, or any guy into "ego sport sex."

Somehow, her refusal makes them friends, which is what they remain, 10 years later, when she's an unhappily single art restorer and he, a child of wealth, has added to both his wealth (he invented "the coffee collar") and his ledger of conquests. He's still selfish, a guy who lives by the sorts of single-guy "rules" such afraid-to-commit types always have in the movies.

Rule: "No more than one 'date' a week." Rule: "No girlfriends at family events."

When we meet Tom's prenup-happy, six-times-married dad (Sydney Pollack, a stitch), we understand.

But Hannah? She's an "I love you" floozy, or words to that effect. She tosses that phrase into the ether, willy nilly. Tom saves his "I love yous" for every cute puppy he meets. Tom's rules and his stinginess with his heart and those three little words leave him incomplete. Happy, sexually sated, but incomplete.

Then, Hannah goes off to Scotland, meets a hunky Scot, plans a wedding and turns to her best friend to be her "MOH," her maid of honor. And just as Tom is struggling with his "MOH" duties to the bride, he begins to realize that the best thing to ever happen to him is about to exit his life. He can't have that and proceeds, with his "boys" (Kadeem Hardison and Chris Messina of "Ira & Abbey," among them) to sabotage the Scot and win the fair lass for himself.

"Made of Honor" is the sort of romantic comedy Dempsey made when he was a mere Hollywood babe in the woods, back when he was the young "Woo Woo Kid" hunk of "In the Mood" and "Loverboy." He plays a serial seducer who stumbles across true love right under his nose. That he can still play this stuff is a testament to his durability.

The comic bits here work well enough. It's the moist-eyed romantic moments that seem to suffer. Monaghan, so plucky in "Gone Baby Gone," such comic dead weight in "The Heartbreak Kid," is little more than the object of desire here. Where's the joy, the giddiness of "I'm getting married!" in her?

The "other man" (Kevin McKidd) is so underwritten and underplayed that one develops a whole new appreciation for how good Cameron Diaz was in "My Best Friend's Wedding." Bit players James Sikking and Busy Philipps (as a bitter cousin passed over for MOH duties in favor of a guy who seduced and dumped her) make their roles funnier.

The best wedding movies always have a touch of heartache, and singing. This one could have used more of that. Brit director Paul Weiland, with a "City Slickers" sequel, the disastrous "Leonard: Part 6" and lots of Mr. Bean bits under his belt, has fun with the snappy banter and pace of the film's New York scenes, but lets the whole thing turn sodden when it treks to Scotland.

Throw-away moments — with his lecherous father, with his posse on the basketball court — and Dempsey's general ease with the material suggest that a better romantic comedy could have been honorably made from this material and some of this cast. What was made was another big Hollywood romantic comedy that leaves something to be desired as a date movie.