License to Wed 2007

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: Just another mediocre addition -- worse than the best sitcoms, better than the worst -- to the expanding list of movies that make Netflix a far more appealing option than going to a theater. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: You'd never know from License to Wed that Krasinski is a big asset to The Office. Here, playing an unappealing male lead, he merely smugs his way through the assignment. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: The movie is a pastiche of tortured slapstick, groan-inducing dialogue and a lethal dose of treacle, apparently awaiting one of Williams' trademark sprees of riffing and vamping to save the day. That moment never comes. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Somewhere along the way, somebody should have pulled this License, at least until the writers found funnier stuff for everybody to do. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Like some weddings, License to Wed is a long sit and a bland buffet. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: I hereby pronounce you a flop. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: ...even if I could have put up with the unpleasantness of this as comedy, I still would have balked at the eventual portrayal of this monster [Williams] as an angel in disguise. Read more

Joanne Kaufman, Wall Street Journal: The inert License to Wed shambles along one lame scene after another. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: All poor Krasinski can do is sigh, look to the camera, and beg for deliverance. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: This is the sort of lobotomized, condescendingly lazy movie that leaves you resentful of Hollywood. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: Krasinski affirms that he can carry more than a desk job on The Office, and Moore plays straight gal in a film that improves, at least, on her last role in the ugh-inducing Because I Said So. License to Wed doesn't fail her this time. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: I have rarely seen a movie with less self-knowledge than License to Wed, an awful comedy made ever so slightly fascinating because of its dual personality. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: It's supposedly a romantic comedy, so imagine a couple of hilarious physical jokes -- you know, a guy takes a baseball to the face, ha-ha -- and channel in a few moments of Robin Williams doing his improv shtick around some key words. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The creepy-faced robot twin babies are funny (for a while); the rest of the film is not. It's like Meet the Parents with Dr. Phil as the officiant from hell. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: It's exactly what it looks like from the commercials -- a one-joke movie, and that one joke isn't even funny to begin with. Read more

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press: Anyone who has been through the process of church-mandated marriage preparation counseling should get a chuckle out of License to Wed, that is if the comedy weren't so badly handled. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: License to Wed is another lamebrain Hollywood comedy in which a peanut gallery of the shrill and the narcissistic conspire to drive a wedge between two innocents. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: All it does is make you wish [Robin Williams] never discovered movies -- or, at least, stuck to voicing cartoons and doing the odd, occasional drama. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Will Robin Williams ever divorce himself from the unholy union of silliness and sentimentality? Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: It is only the latest attempt by a Hollywood studio to pander to prurience and piety in a single gesture, and to avoid giving offense by treating all possible factions of the public equally, which is to say like idiots. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: No matter how hard I try, I'm finding it difficult to write anything positive about License to Wed. This movie is bad from top to bottom, front to back, and start to finish. Read more

Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon.com: Despite its fuzzy, getting-to-know-you message, the movie itself offers zero motivation for any of its protagonists. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: There's bad, there's awful and there's horrible, and then somewhere beyond that, in its own Kingdom of Lousy -- where all the milk curdles and the jokes aren't funny -- is License to Wed. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Forget about Saw, Hostel and all the other films in the new, notorious torture-porn genre. If you're looking for a really sick movie, check out License to Wed. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: This assaultively unappealing 'romantic comedy' could well mark the opening salvo in a whole new Hollywood campaign against movie piracy. Anybody who'd steal this dud would stink just from carrying it around. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The movie is plodding, predictable, formulaic and, worst of all, not funny. Read more

Brian Lowry, Variety: Unleashing Robin Williams in the least flattering possible manner, License to Wed squanders the modest chemistry between its appealing central couple uniting its elements in an astonishingly flat romantic comedy. Read more

Ella Taylor, Village Voice: A blitzed-looking man stumbling out of a screening of this dreadful excuse for unromantic comedy volunteered that the best part of the movie was when Robin Williams got socked in the jaw. Couldn't agree more... Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: It's highly amusing and its cast is extremely persuasive, playing the kind of roles that kill most careers: genuinely nice people. Read more