Showing posts with label wedding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wedding. Show all posts
Friday, November 11, 2011
Friday, December 4, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
I Love You, Man (***1/2)
One of the minor effects of the gay-rights movement is that what used to just be called friendship must sometimes, at least on screen, now be self-consciously distinguished. Hence the concept of a “man date” that can develop into a full-fledged “bromance.” Hence comedies like Superbad, Talledega Nights, and this one that seem to celebrate male-bonding in a self-conscious way, yet keep a (mostly) hetero vibe. Here, newly engaged Peter (Paul Rudd) realizes that, unlike his fiancée (Rashida Jones), he doesn’t have any same-sex friends, and sets out to change that.
A comedy about a guy desperate to make guy friends could easily work the homosexual panic angle for 90 minutes, at best like the Seinfeld episode in which a reporter mistakenly thinks Jerry and George are lovers…not that there’s anything wrong with that. The TV commercial makes it look more like You, Me, and Dupree, in which a a gregarious man-child (in this case, Jason Segel) takes over the regular guy’s life. (Rudd, exuding “regular guy,” is the ideal straight man—no pun intended—to Segel’s wooly persona.) But what it actually reminded me of was a different Seinfeld episode, a two-parter in which Jerry develops a “man-crush” on baseball star Keith Hernandez.) Sure enough, the writer of that 1992 episode, Larry Levin, is the cowriter (with director John Hamburg) of this very movie.
So while sexuality-related themes are part of the mix, what a lot of it’s about is the ways the rituals of friendship are and are not similar to those of romance. When Peter forgets the difference, his intentions are comically misunderstood. Segel’s character is a let-it-all-hang-out sort, but he’s not as extreme as Dupree. (His disdain for rules extends to not cleaning up after his dog.) He represents the hedonistic, loose side that Rudd’s Peter, a real estate agent, worries that he’s repressed. (They bond over the rowdy music of the band Rush.) Some amusing supporting characters, including Lou “The Incredible Hulk” Ferrigno as Peter’s wealthiest client, provide a third avenue for the comedy.
Hamburg, who previously helmed Along Came Polly and wrote Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, skirts the edges of formula comedy, but doesn’t succumb to cliché. I Love You, Man has some sexual humor (hence the R rating), but isn’t smutty. It’s a male-bonding comedy, but a romantic one too. Mostly, it’s very funny.
IMDB link
viewed 2/12/09 (screening at Ritz East) and reviewed 2/12–3/19/09
A comedy about a guy desperate to make guy friends could easily work the homosexual panic angle for 90 minutes, at best like the Seinfeld episode in which a reporter mistakenly thinks Jerry and George are lovers…not that there’s anything wrong with that. The TV commercial makes it look more like You, Me, and Dupree, in which a a gregarious man-child (in this case, Jason Segel) takes over the regular guy’s life. (Rudd, exuding “regular guy,” is the ideal straight man—no pun intended—to Segel’s wooly persona.) But what it actually reminded me of was a different Seinfeld episode, a two-parter in which Jerry develops a “man-crush” on baseball star Keith Hernandez.) Sure enough, the writer of that 1992 episode, Larry Levin, is the cowriter (with director John Hamburg) of this very movie.
So while sexuality-related themes are part of the mix, what a lot of it’s about is the ways the rituals of friendship are and are not similar to those of romance. When Peter forgets the difference, his intentions are comically misunderstood. Segel’s character is a let-it-all-hang-out sort, but he’s not as extreme as Dupree. (His disdain for rules extends to not cleaning up after his dog.) He represents the hedonistic, loose side that Rudd’s Peter, a real estate agent, worries that he’s repressed. (They bond over the rowdy music of the band Rush.) Some amusing supporting characters, including Lou “The Incredible Hulk” Ferrigno as Peter’s wealthiest client, provide a third avenue for the comedy.
Hamburg, who previously helmed Along Came Polly and wrote Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, skirts the edges of formula comedy, but doesn’t succumb to cliché. I Love You, Man has some sexual humor (hence the R rating), but isn’t smutty. It’s a male-bonding comedy, but a romantic one too. Mostly, it’s very funny.
IMDB link
viewed 2/12/09 (screening at Ritz East) and reviewed 2/12–3/19/09
Friday, January 16, 2009
Last Chance Harvey (***1/4)
Never surprising but always charming sums up this semi-comic romance. Dustin Hoffman is the divorced Harvey, and Emma Thompson the late-to-love Kate, an airline employee in London. There American Harvey has arrived for his daughter’s wedding. It is only a question of when and how Harvey and Kate will meet, and what Harvey will do about his job as a composer of jingles, which allows no time for a holiday, let alone a romance.
Rather than boring in its predictability, though, the movie feels comfortable like an old slipper. It’s familiar, but infrequently clichéd or sappy. Writer-director Joel Hopkins has not larded it up with potty-mouthed children, overly horny old people, or wisecracking pals. The only one-liner I noticed was the reference to Kate’s aging mother, who keeps calling during her blind date, as “human contraception.” (I’ve noticed how the cell phone has altered the course of romantic comedy. It has nearly ruined plots about people becoming disconnected—there’s one here that only works to the extent we believe that Kate and Harvey have failed to exchange numbers. Now the cell phone is a marker of annoyance, or of someone who is too busy, rude, or, like Harvey, too disconnected to interact with those in his presence.)
The thing that this movie makes me think is that, generally, speaking, the best romantic comedies are the ones that allow a bit of sadness to creep in. It’s in the forlorn look on Thompson’s face, when Kate feels left out of a conversation with the blind date’s younger acquaintances, or on Hoffman’s as Harvey tries to make conversation when he sees his daughter, who seems more comfortable with her father-in-law to be. The almost inevitable pairing in any romantic comedy represents, ideally, the end of a long stretch of disappointment, perhaps of romantic failure, perhaps of doubt that the happy ending would come, as this movie’s title suggests. It’s why people cry at weddings. Last Chance Harvey certainly isn’t given over to sad moments, but without psychoanalyzing lets us know these characters have known them. Most of all, though, it creates the feeling of serendipitously connecting with someone.
IMDb link
viewed 2/8/09 at AMC Plymouth Meeting; reviewed 2/8–10/09
Rather than boring in its predictability, though, the movie feels comfortable like an old slipper. It’s familiar, but infrequently clichéd or sappy. Writer-director Joel Hopkins has not larded it up with potty-mouthed children, overly horny old people, or wisecracking pals. The only one-liner I noticed was the reference to Kate’s aging mother, who keeps calling during her blind date, as “human contraception.” (I’ve noticed how the cell phone has altered the course of romantic comedy. It has nearly ruined plots about people becoming disconnected—there’s one here that only works to the extent we believe that Kate and Harvey have failed to exchange numbers. Now the cell phone is a marker of annoyance, or of someone who is too busy, rude, or, like Harvey, too disconnected to interact with those in his presence.)
The thing that this movie makes me think is that, generally, speaking, the best romantic comedies are the ones that allow a bit of sadness to creep in. It’s in the forlorn look on Thompson’s face, when Kate feels left out of a conversation with the blind date’s younger acquaintances, or on Hoffman’s as Harvey tries to make conversation when he sees his daughter, who seems more comfortable with her father-in-law to be. The almost inevitable pairing in any romantic comedy represents, ideally, the end of a long stretch of disappointment, perhaps of romantic failure, perhaps of doubt that the happy ending would come, as this movie’s title suggests. It’s why people cry at weddings. Last Chance Harvey certainly isn’t given over to sad moments, but without psychoanalyzing lets us know these characters have known them. Most of all, though, it creates the feeling of serendipitously connecting with someone.
IMDb link
viewed 2/8/09 at AMC Plymouth Meeting; reviewed 2/8–10/09
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Rachel Getting Married (***1/4)
Imagine a middle-class woman from a mildly bohemian family hiring a good videographer or two to film her family on the weekend of her wedding. Imagine also that her sister has just gotten out of rehab—again—and arrived just before the rehearsal dinner. And imagine that, instead of excising all the heavy family drama, they hire an editor to make a really good home movie with everything left in. Consider that a recommendation or warning, as the case may be. Director Jonathan Demme, best known for slick works like Philadelphia and The Silence of the Lambs, here takes a less-polished approach (perhaps influenced by recent documentaries he’s made), working from a script by Jenny Lumet.
The sisters are played by Rosemary Dewitt (Rachel) and Anne Hathaway (troubled Kym). They have a love-hate relationship magnified by past tragedy, though it takes a bit of time to get to that. Hathaway, who started out as a princess with a diary and played angel in The Devil Wears Prada, curdles her nervous energy into a character who is not sweet at all, but is always the center of attention. Even her expressions of guilt seem narcissistic.
There are a lot more characters, and not everything revolves around the sister-sister dynamic. Just a in like a real wedding video, there are a lot of people you won’t get to know well but who all get to say something. In medium-size roles are Debra Winger, as the divorced mother of the bride and Bill Irwin, the avuncular dad. The groom’s extended family are all there, too. (They’re black, but the only significance that’s given is in adding to the multicultural-ness of the quasi-hippie, quasi-Hindu wedding, held at the familt home in Connecticut.) Dewitt may give the best performance.
You probably don’t have a family like the one in this movie, at least I don’t, but the dynamic of their conflict may yet seem familiar. Some of the best scenes perfectly capture the feel of arguments that repeat themselves and never seem to resolve. I’ve never known a family like this, but still felt like it was a real family. Though not quite endearing, even Kym becomes understandable.
It’s not all high drama. There are the musical interludes. (The movie has no score as such, but multiple performances by the musician characters; unsurprisingly, the happy couple favor world music over Top 40. ) And there are some funny parts, too. Lumet apparently lifted one sequence, a dishwasher-loading contest, from an incident involving her dad (director Sidney) and Bob Fosse. Like several other scenes in the movie, including much of the last ten minutes, it could have been edited out of the film without anything not making sense. And no doubt some people will come away from the movie thinking that a lot of it should have been edited out. And that they could’ve done without all of the handheld cameras, which Demme actually gave to the cast to film with. For better or worse, this is easily the most naturalistic feature of 2008.
I will say forthrightly that some people will be put off, or bored, by the narrative detours, unpolished camera work, and angsty drama that provides only an uneasy catharsis. While I occasionally grew impatient with the kitchen-sink structure, the movie’s best scenes are gut-wrenching, and the organic wholeness of Demme’s approach makes it one of the more original movies of the year.
IMDB link
viewed 11/6/08 at Ritz 5; reviewed 1/22/09
The sisters are played by Rosemary Dewitt (Rachel) and Anne Hathaway (troubled Kym). They have a love-hate relationship magnified by past tragedy, though it takes a bit of time to get to that. Hathaway, who started out as a princess with a diary and played angel in The Devil Wears Prada, curdles her nervous energy into a character who is not sweet at all, but is always the center of attention. Even her expressions of guilt seem narcissistic.
There are a lot more characters, and not everything revolves around the sister-sister dynamic. Just a in like a real wedding video, there are a lot of people you won’t get to know well but who all get to say something. In medium-size roles are Debra Winger, as the divorced mother of the bride and Bill Irwin, the avuncular dad. The groom’s extended family are all there, too. (They’re black, but the only significance that’s given is in adding to the multicultural-ness of the quasi-hippie, quasi-Hindu wedding, held at the familt home in Connecticut.) Dewitt may give the best performance.
You probably don’t have a family like the one in this movie, at least I don’t, but the dynamic of their conflict may yet seem familiar. Some of the best scenes perfectly capture the feel of arguments that repeat themselves and never seem to resolve. I’ve never known a family like this, but still felt like it was a real family. Though not quite endearing, even Kym becomes understandable.
It’s not all high drama. There are the musical interludes. (The movie has no score as such, but multiple performances by the musician characters; unsurprisingly, the happy couple favor world music over Top 40. ) And there are some funny parts, too. Lumet apparently lifted one sequence, a dishwasher-loading contest, from an incident involving her dad (director Sidney) and Bob Fosse. Like several other scenes in the movie, including much of the last ten minutes, it could have been edited out of the film without anything not making sense. And no doubt some people will come away from the movie thinking that a lot of it should have been edited out. And that they could’ve done without all of the handheld cameras, which Demme actually gave to the cast to film with. For better or worse, this is easily the most naturalistic feature of 2008.
I will say forthrightly that some people will be put off, or bored, by the narrative detours, unpolished camera work, and angsty drama that provides only an uneasy catharsis. While I occasionally grew impatient with the kitchen-sink structure, the movie’s best scenes are gut-wrenching, and the organic wholeness of Demme’s approach makes it one of the more original movies of the year.
IMDB link
viewed 11/6/08 at Ritz 5; reviewed 1/22/09
Friday, May 30, 2008
Sex and the City (**3/4)
I must confess I’ve barely seen the HBO hit upon which this is based, but I can see the appeal. On the one hand, the series is a seriocomic fantasy about four wealthy Manhattan women who shop a lot, date a variety of eligible (and occasionally ineligible) gentlemen, and have frank conversations whose main subject is the one in the title. (For a series about women, it was largely a series about men, notwithstanding hedonistic Samantha’s brief same-sex experimentation.) Yet there’s some reality too; the series brought up all manner of relationship issues, many familiar and a few, like “funky spunk,” that may or may not be a problem for many viewers. But mainly, the appeal lies in having well-delineated characters, sometimes-clever writing, and an emphasis on the rarely challenged friendship among the women.
The movie version, written and directed by frequent series contributor Michael Patrick King, apparently without the involvement of series creator Darren Star, contains all of these threads, yet tends to the melancholy side. Suiting the transition from TV show to feature film, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw has completed the transition from columnist to book author, just like her real-life alter-ego Candace Bushnell, but still provides pithy voiceovers. (“A knockoff isn’t easy to spot when it comes to love.”) Her possibly impending marriage to Chris Noth’s “Mr. Big” provides the framework for the film. A parade of wedding dresses Carrie gets to try on should serve as fashion porn for those whose interests lie in that direction. There’s another trying-on montage scene later, which had me looking at my watch.
For those of a different inclination, Samantha’s (Kim Catrall) escapades in the series had provided titillation and male eye candy. It’s unfortunate that for most of this movie her libido is sidelined, and so is she, having moved to LA in an attempt at monogamy that may be as frustrating for the viewer as it is for her. Perky Charlotte (Kristin Davis), wife and mother to an adopted three-year-old, mostly serves as a foil for the other characters, leaving the most compelling subplot to high-strung Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), whose husband confesses to cheating after they’ve not slept together for six months. Hence more melancholy, but Miranda’s trust issues are easier to relate to than Carrie’s.
I won’t give away why exactly it takes over two hours before we find out whether Carrie and Big will marry after all, but to me the thing that keeps them apart is basically trivial and arguably phony. Critics have often called the series and its characters shallow, but others found it shallow and fun. Shallow and dour is not so appealing. I wouldn’t mind watching Carrie mope in Mexico, as she does when things seem to sour, so much if this storyline were better and not built around the conventional dilemma of will-they-or-won’t-they-get-married. Not to say there aren’t some lighter moments. An early scene in which the four women comically use coloring with crayons as a sexual metaphor, due to the presence of Charlotte’s young daughter, has the right feel to it, at once funny and truthful. The scenes with Jennifer Hudson, as Carrie’s newly hired assistant, also have that balance between lightness and seriousness that is sometimes missing elsewhere.
The theme of the movie is forgiveness, and I’m sure most longtime fans will forgive its flaws, but notice them. (Newcomers don’t need to have seen the series to follow along.) After seeing the feature I went and watched a whole episode—the one where Charlotte meets her future husband (Evan Handler)—and enjoyed that at least as much.
IMDB link
viewed 5/30/08 at Moorestown
The movie version, written and directed by frequent series contributor Michael Patrick King, apparently without the involvement of series creator Darren Star, contains all of these threads, yet tends to the melancholy side. Suiting the transition from TV show to feature film, Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw has completed the transition from columnist to book author, just like her real-life alter-ego Candace Bushnell, but still provides pithy voiceovers. (“A knockoff isn’t easy to spot when it comes to love.”) Her possibly impending marriage to Chris Noth’s “Mr. Big” provides the framework for the film. A parade of wedding dresses Carrie gets to try on should serve as fashion porn for those whose interests lie in that direction. There’s another trying-on montage scene later, which had me looking at my watch.
For those of a different inclination, Samantha’s (Kim Catrall) escapades in the series had provided titillation and male eye candy. It’s unfortunate that for most of this movie her libido is sidelined, and so is she, having moved to LA in an attempt at monogamy that may be as frustrating for the viewer as it is for her. Perky Charlotte (Kristin Davis), wife and mother to an adopted three-year-old, mostly serves as a foil for the other characters, leaving the most compelling subplot to high-strung Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), whose husband confesses to cheating after they’ve not slept together for six months. Hence more melancholy, but Miranda’s trust issues are easier to relate to than Carrie’s.
I won’t give away why exactly it takes over two hours before we find out whether Carrie and Big will marry after all, but to me the thing that keeps them apart is basically trivial and arguably phony. Critics have often called the series and its characters shallow, but others found it shallow and fun. Shallow and dour is not so appealing. I wouldn’t mind watching Carrie mope in Mexico, as she does when things seem to sour, so much if this storyline were better and not built around the conventional dilemma of will-they-or-won’t-they-get-married. Not to say there aren’t some lighter moments. An early scene in which the four women comically use coloring with crayons as a sexual metaphor, due to the presence of Charlotte’s young daughter, has the right feel to it, at once funny and truthful. The scenes with Jennifer Hudson, as Carrie’s newly hired assistant, also have that balance between lightness and seriousness that is sometimes missing elsewhere.
The theme of the movie is forgiveness, and I’m sure most longtime fans will forgive its flaws, but notice them. (Newcomers don’t need to have seen the series to follow along.) After seeing the feature I went and watched a whole episode—the one where Charlotte meets her future husband (Evan Handler)—and enjoyed that at least as much.
IMDB link
viewed 5/30/08 at Moorestown
Friday, May 23, 2008
Jellyfish (***)
This is one of those films with several storylines that intersect in small ways, united in this case by a wedding in Tel Aviv. Despite the Israeli setting, the movie is neither political nor, for the most part, particular to its setting. One character is a struggling waitress working for a caterer and living in an apartment with a leaking roof. Having lost a boyfriend, she finds a lost child by the sea. Another story concerns newlyweds who seem to be on different wavelengths, which could be the theme of all the stories. The third plotline is about a Philippine home health aide whose communication problems are quite literal. (She speaks English, but very little Hebrew.)
I enjoyed this while I was watching it, but it seemed wispy and insubstantial, kind of an indie version of a feel-good movie, with a sort of poetic ending.
IMDB link
viewed 6/19/08 (Ritz Bourse); reviewed 6/23/08
I enjoyed this while I was watching it, but it seemed wispy and insubstantial, kind of an indie version of a feel-good movie, with a sort of poetic ending.
IMDB link
viewed 6/19/08 (Ritz Bourse); reviewed 6/23/08
Friday, May 9, 2008
What Happens in Vegas (*1/2)
This “romantic” comedy has four segments. In the first, the guy (Ashton Kutcher) is fired by his own dad, and his bride-to-be gets dumped by her fiancé as a bunch of hidden surprise-party guests listen in. I liked that part best, not just because the surprise-party gag was amusing, but because I had not yet begun to hate these people. That would seem to be the object of the second part of the movie, a screamingly absurd sequence of events that begins with the parties getting accidentally assigned to the same hotel room—cue the screams—and ends with them forced, in the aftermath of a drinking-binge wedding that same night, to cohabit in the groom’s scuzzy one-bedroom apartment in New York. The third and longest segment reinforced my dislike of the two characters as they feud for reasons inadequately explained by the trumped-up plot. The puckering Diaz and the smirking Kutcher carefully overplay each line. And then, in the fourth segment—guess what—they are suddenly supposedly to like each other, and we are supposed to like them. This kind of love-hate comedy can sometimes work, but even if Diaz and Kutcher were Tracy and Hepburn—they’re not—they couldn’t have overcome a script devoid of logic or wit. Without wit, this feuding couple become merely an obnoxious, unfunny pair of actors.
IMDB link
viewed 5/10/08 at Moorestown; reviewed 5/11/08
IMDB link
viewed 5/10/08 at Moorestown; reviewed 5/11/08
Friday, May 2, 2008
Made of Honor (*3/4)
I’ve got to write this review quickly, lest I forget this by-the-numbers romantic comedy completely. Playing into the fantasy that the womanizing man truly only wants true love, it flips the scenario of My Best Friend’s Wedding. That is, when he (Patrick Dempsey) realizes he loves her (Michelle Monaghan), she’s about to marry someone else, some Scottish dude. Now, I don’t remember the Julia Roberts character sleeping around so much in Wedding. That idea must have been lifted from some other movie. In any case, it’s not easy to believe that these attractive people who’ve been best pals for ten years have never previously considered each other as romantic partners, and the flimsy setup offered up by the three screenwriters doesn’t help sell it. They’re too busy setting up a generic rom-com plot to create characters of even the slightest depth. There’s the overachieving romantic rival to introduce, the over-elaborate wedding that, for no apparent reason, is set to take place in mere weeks, and, at last, the race-against-time finale. As for the comedy part of the equation, I believe hilarity was intended by having the guy be the “maid” of honor. Cue the gay jokes, and isn’t it funny for a guy to be helping to choose the china pattern? On the bright side, the cheap physical humor and forced wackiness is kept to a minimum. Still, this movie was so dull that it probably could have used a pie fight or two.
IMDB link
viewed 5/3/08; reviewed 5/5/08
IMDB link
viewed 5/3/08; reviewed 5/5/08
Friday, January 18, 2008
27 Dresses (**3/4)
Always a bridesmaid, never a bride is the cliché that describes the heroine of this romantic comedy (Katherine Heigl). Alas, it’s not the only cliché, and Heigl’s measured performance doesn’t quite lift this above similar fare. Our heroine’s been pining for her dashing, successful boss (Edward Burns) for years, but her lack of gumption means that her just-arrived sister is the one to catch the his eye. Meanwhile, a newsman (James Marsden) who happens to write a wedding column for a New York tabloid has his sights on her.
Friday, July 6, 2007
License to Wed (*3/4)
I decided I liked Mandy Moore when I read that she’d apologized for the quality of her early albums. Perhaps one day she’ll be moved to apologize for her 2007 pair of duds, consisting of Because I Said So and this misbegotten romantic comedy in which she costars with John Krasinski of NBC’s The Office. Or maybe the four writers should be sorry. The premise is that the two have decided to get married, but her priest requires anyone he marries to take his marriage course. The priest is played by Robin Williams, which means the first we see of him is using a game show format to teach the Ten Commandments to a Sunday school class. It’s slightly worrisome that the last one the kids guess is the one rendered as “Be Chill. Don’t Kill,” which I suppose might be funny to some schoolchildren.
“What do you do, besides little Sadie?” the clergyman asks the prospective groom, who quickly sizes up the man as a nutter, but proceeds with the course to please Sadie. It must be to Moore’s credit that Sadie is fairly likeable, since her faith in this stalking servant of the Lord seems misguided, even before he starts committing arrestable offenses.
It’s a tricky thing to show a couple not get along realistically, though, and this movie doesn’t manage it. (Compare 2006’s The Break-Up.) Nothing much is realistic. First, there’s my pet peeve about movie weddings, which is that no one ever has a proper engagement period. It’s only three weeks here. Have any screenwriters ever tried to hire caterers and bands on short notice? Three weeks isn’t even enough time to mail the invitations. More importantly, it’s not enough time to show how two people who’ve supposedly never had an argument grow suddenly apart. Except for a brief prologue, we never even see the couple before the engagement, and so the way we find out that Sadie is a control freak is because someone else says she is.
It may be too much to demand character development in a Robin Williams comedy, but how about comedy? Silly isn’t the same as funny. I will admit that the weird-looking fake twin babies that the course requires the couple to carry around made me laugh. On the other hand, giving Williams a twelve-year-old protégé/henchman didn’t. (With this and his similar role in Nancy Drew, Josh Flitter may be trying to corner the market in obnoxious tween boy roles.)
Probably License to Wed will appeal more to people who like watching Williams do his schtick rather than romantic comedy audiences. At least he seems to have a personality. Moore is nice, but has little to work with, and Krasinski is merely a blander version of his mild-mannered TV character. Their chemistry is middling. Four of Krasinski’s Office mates appear in small roles, and the show’s frequent director, Ken Kwapis, does that chore here. But the movie is as broad and dull as the TV show is sharp and subtle.
IMDB link
written 7/9/07
“What do you do, besides little Sadie?” the clergyman asks the prospective groom, who quickly sizes up the man as a nutter, but proceeds with the course to please Sadie. It must be to Moore’s credit that Sadie is fairly likeable, since her faith in this stalking servant of the Lord seems misguided, even before he starts committing arrestable offenses.
It’s a tricky thing to show a couple not get along realistically, though, and this movie doesn’t manage it. (Compare 2006’s The Break-Up.) Nothing much is realistic. First, there’s my pet peeve about movie weddings, which is that no one ever has a proper engagement period. It’s only three weeks here. Have any screenwriters ever tried to hire caterers and bands on short notice? Three weeks isn’t even enough time to mail the invitations. More importantly, it’s not enough time to show how two people who’ve supposedly never had an argument grow suddenly apart. Except for a brief prologue, we never even see the couple before the engagement, and so the way we find out that Sadie is a control freak is because someone else says she is.
It may be too much to demand character development in a Robin Williams comedy, but how about comedy? Silly isn’t the same as funny. I will admit that the weird-looking fake twin babies that the course requires the couple to carry around made me laugh. On the other hand, giving Williams a twelve-year-old protégé/henchman didn’t. (With this and his similar role in Nancy Drew, Josh Flitter may be trying to corner the market in obnoxious tween boy roles.)
Probably License to Wed will appeal more to people who like watching Williams do his schtick rather than romantic comedy audiences. At least he seems to have a personality. Moore is nice, but has little to work with, and Krasinski is merely a blander version of his mild-mannered TV character. Their chemistry is middling. Four of Krasinski’s Office mates appear in small roles, and the show’s frequent director, Ken Kwapis, does that chore here. But the movie is as broad and dull as the TV show is sharp and subtle.
IMDB link
written 7/9/07
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