License to Wed

Warner Bros. Entertainment

Review in a Hurry:  Office-dweller John Krasinski can't marry the girl of his dreams (Mandy Moore) without the blessing of Reverend Frank (Robin Williams), an aggressive busybody with irritatingly unconventional methods. You've seen this movie a hundred times, but rarely has it been this desperately unfunny.

The Bigger Picture:  This crash course in Marriage 101 is a bona fide crash and burn. Affable everyman Ben (Krasinski) wants to give his fiancée her perfect wedding. To book the church, however, they need to pass Reverend Frank's marriage prep course, designed to be a no-holds-barred introduction to the pitfalls of wedded bliss: artificially induced screaming matches, enforced celibacy, mechanical babies and totally outrageous electronic surveillance!

The ghoulish animatronic babies—with faces only a blind mother could love—get the most laughs, giving the cast the dubious honor of being upstaged by a collection of Radio Shack parts. Unfortunately the babies' appearance marks the point at which the wheels come off.

What could have been a well-grounded, lighthearted romp instead becomes wildly uneven, fumbling for both human relevance and far-out, fairy-tale antics but grasping neither.

This isn't the kiss of death for a comedy, but License to Wed botches what could have been its saving graces. Krasinski's easygoing comic timing is slaughtered by the film's abrupt pacing; Moore's charms are ineffective when all she gets to do is alternate between earnestness and sulking, and no matter how hard Williams tries he can't sell the overbearing reverend as either a hero or a villain.

Any movie with this many eye-rolling moments should have its comedic license revoked.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  When the postcredits outtakes are funnier than anything that's come before, you know a movie's in trouble. (By then, though, it's too late, isn't it?) Also, you could enjoy this if you're a rabid, easily distracted fan of The Office, since half the cast comes along for the ride.