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License to Wed Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG-13 (for sexual humor and language) Genre: Comedy Theater release: July 03, 2007 by Warner Brothers Directed by: Ken Kwapis Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes Cast: Robin Williams (Reverend Frank), Mandy Moore (Sadie Jones), John Krasinski (Ben Murphy), Josh Flitter (Choir Boy), Eric Christian Olsen (Carlisle), Christine Taylor (Lindsey Jones), Grace Zabriskie (Grandma Jones), Wanda Sykes (Nurse Borman) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

There is a scene in License to Wed in which Robin Williams, playing an Episcopalian minister named Reverend Frank, throws a baseball at John Krasinski and hits him in the nose—and you suspect it wasn't an accident. Williams then comes up to Krasinski and offers to "heal" his bleeding nose, first by laying hands on him and speaking in mock tongues, and then by going "old school" and reciting some Latin. Meanwhile, a dark-haired boy in a dark suit, looking a little like a chunkier version of The Omen's Damien Thorne, stands to the side and shouts "The power of Christ compels you!" as though he was rehearsing for a grade-school stage adaptation of The Exorcist. And then Williams shrugs it all off and admits that Krasinski just needs some first aid.

If you take spiritual matters at all seriously, then you have to wonder why in the world any minister would mock multiple forms of prayer—especially at the very moment when someone needs his help, and all because of an injury inflicted by the minister himself. Of course, perhaps I take this too seriously. Perhaps we are supposed to forget that Reverend Frank is an actual character, and perhaps we are supposed to look at this entire movie as an extension of Williams's manic stand-up shtick. But even if that were the case, License to Wed still isn't very funny.

Robin Williams as Reverend Frank

Instead, the film ranges somewhere between boring and offensive. And I don't just mean offensive because of how it treats religious themes. I mean offensive in the sense that the entire film is populated by characters who drive each other crazy for no good reason, characters whose presence you are all too eager to leave. And throwing baseballs at other people's noses is just the tip of the iceberg.

The film concerns Ben Murphy (Krasinski) and Sadie Jones (Mandy Moore), a young couple who meet, move in together, decide to get married and enroll in a bizarre marriage-preparation course created by Reverend Frank. The film gives a tacit nod to the fact that Ben and Sadie really shouldn't be sleeping together before marriage; when an afternoon quickie results in them being late for their first meeting with the Reverend, Sadie jokes, "We're so going to hell!" But Reverend Frank seems okay with the modern morality; not only does he approvingly call moving in together "the next step" after dating, there are certain aspects of his course that require the couple to live together. He does, however, stipulate that the couple abstain from sex for the duration of the course—though it seems he does so less for moral reasons and more because it's just another way to drive happy young couples apart.

John Krasinski as Ben Murphy and Mandy Moore as Sadie Jones

And yes, driving young couples apart seems to be key to Reverend Frank's method—all for their own good, of course. Reverend Frank gets Ben and Sadie to participate in exercises that create a world of awkwardness for both of them, but especially for Ben: he gets them to improvise "fights" in front of strangers, fights that bring out tensions the couple never knew they had; he gets Ben to say what he "really" thinks of his future in-laws to their faces; he makes Ben and Sadie "parent" a couple of creepy robot babies that excrete all the usual things that babies excrete; and he gets Sadie to drive blindfolded, with Ben guiding her from the back seat, to teach them a lesson in trust. And why do they put up with all this? Because Sadie's family has ties to Reverend Frank's church and she has always wanted to get married there.

All of these characters are annoying, on some level or other. Planning a wedding is stressful enough—especially when it must be done within three weeks, as is the case here—without someone like Reverend Frank picking at every scab and looking for new wounds to inflict just so he can heal them. Sadie's willingness to play along with Reverend Frank's schemes—and her consistent disappointment in Ben for failing to be as enthusiastic for these schemes as she is—makes you want to call the wedding off long before any of the characters suggest doing so. And when Ben is goaded into telling Sadie's family what he "really" thinks of them, let's just say he goes beyond the call of duty in a way that makes him look dumb and clueless.

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