For years, manic comedy was considered Robin Williams' forte. The rapid-fire, change-on-a-dime stylings of the stand-up work that helped discover him carried over to TV's "Mork and Mindy" and then a high energy film career. But Williams was also a competent dramatic actor, having been classically trained at Julliard. Dramatic work in comedies and then straight turns in films like Dead Poets Society and Awakenings let the secret out, but generally making people laugh remained his bread-and-butter. Then came Good Will Hunting, released at the end of 1997 and earning Williams his first Academy Award the following March. His acclaimed performance as a widowed psychologist seemed to signal a career redirection, turning him to more drama-skewed dramadies. Films like Patch Adams, Jakob the Liar, and Bicentennial Man may have given the performer free reign to be silly, but they also called for teary sentimentality in a mix critics were none too crazy about. After Y2K arrived, Williams disappeared for a few years, and when he returned, the comedy was more or less gone, as the actor embraced dark, humorless roles in the well-regarded dramas Insomnia and One Hour Photo. He'd let loose in the occasional voiceover job, but he was only seen (and I'm using that word generously) in minimally-distributed independent films.Last year marked a resurgence for Williams, as he headlined a handful of diverse films -- a bit of the old comedic Williams (RV), a bit of the new dreary Williams (The Night Listener), with some voiceovers and a supporting turn in the blockbuster Night at the Museum thrown in for good measure. 2007 has been a little quieter for Williams; he's got the extremely odd-looking August Rush due out Thanksgiving week. Before that, he appeared in License to Wed, one of the worst-reviewed movies of the year. License to Wed gives us old school pre-Oscar Williams: lots of silliness and a minimum of seriousness. Here, he plays Reverend Frank, a Christian minister at St. Augustine's Church, where the young, newly betrothed Ben Murphy (John Krasinski) and Sadie Jones (Mandy Moore) decide to have their wedding. Having to choose between an opening three weeks away and one that's two years away, the couple opts for the former. To get wed, however, they'll first have to endure Rev. Frank's marriage preparation course. Designed to keep divorce rates down and incompatible parties apart, the crash course is expectedly over-the-top in its extremeness. Ben and Sadie are taught to fight. They're assigned a pair of fussy robot babies to watch over. They've got to give up sex until the wedding. There are word activities meant to create stirs. And all the while, Frank and his little Ministers of Tomorrow mentee/sidekick "Choir Boy" (Josh Flitter) have bugged the couple's apartment and are monitoring their behavior and reactions toward the training program.Never for a minute does anyone doubt how the film will play out, for it conforms to every design convention of the romantic comedy genre. Never for a minute does one mistake the film for being remotely realistic or having great insight on the sanctity of marriage. Still, the film is entertaining enough, a gentle and gentile version of a Ben Stiller embarrassment comedy that makes up for the lack of a strong, identifiable Stiller protagonist with the presence of high-strung and intermittently humorous Williams. The movie certainly leaves a lot of room for improvement. Though individually charismatic, Krasinski and Moore don't have a lot of chemistry together. Supporting characters are insufficiently developed, serving as a showcase for ideas and humor attempts that fail to work. As Ben's unhappily married best friend, DeRay Davis feels like token minority casting and his jokes fall flat. As Sadie's divorced older sister, Christine Taylor (another suggestion of being in Stiller-land) is wasted. Amazon.com Widgets As Sadie's close, cultured male friend, Eric Christian Olsen is supposed to represent a threat but if you're like me, you'll forget he's not just her brother. Likewise, Sadie's parents and grandmother barely make an impression and certainly don't elevate the intended comic awkwardness factor.The three credited screenwriters (Kim Barker and the team of Tim Rasmussen & Vince Di Meglio) are all short on experience and presumably young. Their first big studio effort isn't a bad one. While sitcomish and flighty, License to Wed happily doesn't revel in gross-out humor or nastiness. The material is light and predictable, but consistently diverting. Though director Ken Kwapis doesn't bring much flair or vision to the proceedings, he does bring a connection to NBC's "The Office", from which Krasinski and three briefly-seen cast members (including a laugh-scoring Brian Baumgartner) are plucked. If "The Office" (which Kwapis occasionally executive-produces and directs), feels a little too good for network television (especially in its most recent episodes), License to Wed feels slightly out of its league on the big screen. If not for Williams and all that he brings to the table, this project could very well have "TV movie" written all over it. Then again, without Williams, there just might not be anything there.Though scorched by critics, License performed moderately well in theaters, earning a little under $44 million. While that isn't much next to the big-budget sequels and action flicks it shared multiplexes with and it pales next to Williams' career highs, the mid-range performance is pretty much par for the genre. Just a shade under four months after opening in theaters, License to Wed simultaneously reached DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD from Warner Brothers.
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