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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Creepy 'License' not wedded bliss

By James Ward
Visalia (Calif.) Times-Delta

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Sadie and Ben (Mandy Moore and John Krasinski) take a premarital course from the Rev. Frank (Robin Williams) in "License to Wed."

PETER SOREL | Warner Bros. via Associated Press

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"LICENSE TO WED"

PG-13, for sexual humor and crude language

90 minutes

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What were the creative forces behind "License to Wed" thinking?

That's the reaction you'll most likely leave the theater with if you're unlucky enough to buy a ticket for this dreadful comedy that opens today.

Did the four-person screenwriting team think a comedy about a priest who hangs out with a prepubescent boy in a van in the middle of the night would be funny? Or how about taking the kid to Jamaica — without his parents?

In between those spectacularly tone-deaf scenes — didn't anyone behind this film read newspapers for the last decade? — the movie also has the same kid break into people's apartments and plant listening devices in their bedrooms so the above said priest could listen to their private conversations.

Creepy.

Not only is "License to Wed" creepy, it's not remotely funny.

Star Robin Williams is at his most annoying here. Because the filmmakers don't have much of a script, Williams must pad the movie with his manic stream-of-consciousness comedy riffs.

That means we get some unfunny scenes of the comedian teaching Sunday school while conducting a "Family Feud"-like game show or "healing" people by screeching M.C. Hammer lyrics.

The movie opens as a young couple — Sadie and Ben (Mandy Moore and John Krasinski) — decide to get married. Sadie wants the ceremony to happen in the family church. Enter the Rev. Frank (Williams), who insists the couple take his premarital course before he agrees to wed them.

Rev. Frank's course includes bursting into the couple's apartment late at night and sticking them with creepy baby robots. He does this, he says, to battle the parishioners' high divorce rate.

And then there's the above-mentioned surveillance. The good reverend uses an annoying little boy (Josh Flitter, who was also irritating in "Nancy Drew" last month) to do his dirty work.

Director Ken Kwapis handles all the action in a lackluster way. Scenes drag on, delivering the same comic punch line time after time. How flat is the comedy? Even the hyperactive Williams is unable to inject life into the action.