License to Wed should be revoked
Written: Jul 15 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Umm...let's see...I'm trying hard here
Cons: EVERY F'N THING!
The Bottom Line: This is the first movie in YEARS that I actually wanted to walk out of, and that's coming from someone who saw Freddy Got Fingered at the theater.
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| phungus's Full Review: License to Wed |
Have you ever considered how Pulp Fiction both created and ruined a new genre of movie because of all the other bad rip-off movies that copied so much from it? The same thing happened after the original Die Hard when all of a sudden the same plot formula showed up in countless other action movies. After having seen License to Wed, I’m starting to think that Meet the Parents might have fallen into the same genre-wrecking category.
I absolutely hated this movie. I want to make that loud and clear. This is the first movie in years where I really wanted to walk out of it because I was fed up. On top of that, it’s just barely more than an hour long. It does show a running time of 90 minutes, but that’s because of the extra long credits with some gag reels. My wife wasn’t too happy with me when I got up and started walking down the stairs as soon as the credits started to roll. I just couldn’t take any more and didn’t even want to sit through the gag reel.
This movie is about a young couple (John Krasinski and Mandy Moore) who are getting married in a large church, and the pastor (Robin Williams) makes them go through a sort of course where they make sure that they’re ready for marriage. This type of thing is not all uncommon with some churches, but of course most sane people would never go to the lengths that this stupid movie does. As you might expect, the couple starts having a little trouble with the course when, for example, Krasinski can’t direct Moore’s character to drive while blindfolded. We all know that if you can’t talk somebody through driving in downtown traffic while blindfolded, then you have no business getting married. It means you can’t communicate, right? No – It just means this movie is stupid as hell.
In short, this a movie where what are supposed to be the funniest parts rely entirely on how annoying Robin Williams can be. I love Williams when he’s got the right character and story to work with, but he was intolerable in this movie.
Ever since Meet the Parents, there have been too many movies where the ‘comedy’ is all about some guy being physically, emotionally, or psychologically abused by someone else. In this movie, was I really going to laugh when Krasinski gets hit in the face with a baseball? My little brother once took a baseball in the nose and had to have surgery to fix it, and it still doesn’t look right. Was I also supposed to laugh when Robin Williams pretends to heal Krasinski in a way that mocks those silly televangelist healers? The scene might have been a little funny if it didn’t go on for ever. Williams’ character actually tries three times to do the healing. It was just barely funny the first time. The two other times just showed how little creativity the writers put into this.
Ultimately, what makes this movie fail was not the retarded premise or the dumb jokes. It fails to develop the characters enough to make them likable, and instead spends the most time on the most unlikable character in the whole movie – the one played by Robin Williams. As much as I love John Krasinski in The Office and am glad to see him breaking into major movie roles, he just didn’t have much to do with this movie. What made Meet the Parents work so well was the chemistry between Ben Stiller and Robert DeNiro. Krasinski and Williams never get to have a single scene that goes smoothly, so there’s just no cohesion there. As for Mandy Moore, I have yet to see a movie with her that I actually liked. She’s a beautiful and talented actress, and she did seem to have some chemistry with Krasinksi, but like everything else in this movie, their relationship was underdeveloped.
Another reviewer here has already done a fine job of running down how much this movie lifts from Meet the Parents, so I won’t go into all that. Suffice to say, this movie was awful. I only laughed a couple of times, but as a whole I found it to be a major letdown. Don’t waste your time or money on this at the theater. License to Wed should be revoked.
Recommended:
No
Movie Mood: Date Movie
Worst Part of this Film: Everything
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