License to Wed (2007)
Directed by Ken Kwapis
Written by Vince Dimeglio
Starring Robin Williams, John Kracinski, Mandy Moore
Release Date July 3rd, 2007
Published July 3rd, 2007
Robin Williams is one of the quickest, funniest wits in the business. His whirling comic dervish is a perpetual motion device of comic invention. His mind leaps from one wild reference point to the next, selling even the worst one liner with high energy histrionics that themselves often earn a laugh. If he has one major weakness, it's a taste for the maudlin and simple minded.
Williams' worst films aim for the heart instead of the funny bone with eye rolling results. His latest comedy License To Wed falls somewhere in between Williams at his best and worst. His wildman preacher, Reverend Frank, is perfectly suited to his fast paced style. However, License To Wed being a romantic comedy also opens up the opportunity for the overly sentimental and sappy, an opportunity Williams cannot resist.
When Ben (John Kracinski) met Sadie (Mandy Moore) it was love at first sight. Both of them knew right away that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together and six months after that first meeting; Ben asked her to marry him and she said yes. Of course, it could never be that simple. Though Ben wants to fly down to Jamaica for the wedding, Sadie wants to marry in the church she grew up in and planned her dream wedding around.
To give Sadie the wedding of her dreams Ben has to survive meeting Reverend Frank (Robin Williams) who is not just the church pastor but also a pre-marriage counselor who will refuse to allow a couple to wed if they cannot survive his rigorous pre-marriage course. The couple has three weeks until their wedding day and during that time Reverend Frank will drive them completely nuts to make absolutely certain they are ready to be wed.
License To Wed, directed by Ken Kwapis (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), plays like a one line Hollywood pitch meeting "Robin Williams as a wacky priest/wedding counselor". It's an idea more than it is a movie and it plays much like an unformed idea that never coalesced into a full length feature. Director Ken Kwapis does manage to capture a few of those typically Robin Williams moments, the kind of fast paced, improv jokes that only Williams can pull off, but most of License To Wed just lays there waiting for another Williams improv to give it life.
The Office star John Kracinski is an appealing comic presence whose deadpan expression and mischievous nature have been terrifically funny on TV turns bland in this banal pseudo-romance. Struggling to connect with the wooden Mandy Moore, Kracinski is pushed into some forced slapstick in order to drag laughs out of scenes that Robin Williams can't save with a quick improv.
Kracinski comes off bland and boring in License To Wed and co-star Moore is little help. Once, I had thought that Moore had potential. She delivered a terrifically bitchy performance in the indie comedy Saved and did a similar number in the daring disaster American Dreamz. And she was terrifically funny in a brief stint on TV's Scrubs. Since then however, she has regressed as she tries desperately for romantic comedy stardom in the dreadful Because I Said So and now License To Wed.
What little that works in License To Wed comes from Robin Williams. Allowed to run amok by what is only a semblance of a plot, Williams can't help but find a few solid one liners and a few big gags. However, he also can't help whiffing on a few stale jokes and in his inevitable soft and cuddly turn. There is no denying though that when Williams is on his game he's as funny as anyone in the business and he rescues more than a few scenes in License To Wed with his talent for improvisation.
As hit and miss a's Willams can be and often is in License To Wed, scenes without him long for his spontaneity and energy. The fact is that this movie got made on the pitch of Robin Williams as a wacky preacher which puts stars John Kracinski and Mandy Moore at a big disadvantage. Their roles are bigger than Williams' and yet as the film is set up, they are in service to him and without him they flounder.
License To Wed has a number of laugh out loud moments, all of them thanks to Robin Williams. Sadly, however, those laughs are random and often don't serve to move the story forward. Some gags, bits and jokes even pause the story to complete themselves, as if the movie itself were acknowledging its own story bankruptcy.
Looking on the bright side, as long as John Kracinski is picking such poor film roles he will have plenty of time for his TV show The Office. That bright side has nothing to do with License To Wed but as an Office fan it made me smile.
