Movie Review: License to Wed

Mandy Moore hears wedding bells yet again, and just like her previous, teen-oriented romantic comedies License to Wed will send you running from the altar. However unlike her last disastrous headliner, Because I Said So, there is one redeeming quality that will make this film moderately enjoyably for audiences and that is the presence of the wonderful Robin Williams.

Sadie (Moore) and Ben (John Kraninski) are ready to tie the knot, but the bride to be has just one condition, she wants to be married in the same church she attended growing up. Having wanted to be married in a tropical destination, Ben begrudgingly agrees. With little to no availability, the popular, yet highly unorthodox Reverend Frank agrees to squeeze the couple in, but on one condition, they complete his three month marriage preparation course in a hurried three weeks.

The course, which is designed to bring out future marital problems in order to test how the couple will deal with the stress before committing their lives to each other, quickly starts to drive Ben up the wall. Reverend Frank and his partner in crime, a rather stumpy youth partaking in a ministers of tomorrow program, seem to be everywhere, giving the couple little to no intimate privacy. Feeling like he is losing touch with his fiancé, Ben follows the advice of his friend, and rather than concentrating on passing the course, he tries to find a crack in Reverend Frank's armor hoping that it will get him and Sadie out of the course and back on track with their lives.

With License to Wed, plausibility completely goes out the window. Rather than saving Reverend Frank's more unorthodox methods for later in the film, the screenplay throws Ben and Sadie into outrageous scenarios right away. A good comedy should simmer to a boil, saving the best and most outrageous jokes for last, but director Ken Kwapis seems to feel that Robin Williams presence alone should justify throwing this natural form of comedic storytelling out the window, causing the film to only work in slight spurts.