Critic gives this one 'License' to bomb

Lame is the name of this game. Even by summer comedy standards.

"License to Wed" is numbingly dumb, by-the-numbers tripe that sidesteps the ruinous mistake so often committed in Robin Williams comedies only to infect it with another. Ordinarily, the problem with a failed Williams outing is having provided him with a vapid script and carte blanche to bounce off the walls with impunity.

Movies are not stand-up. They are not appearances on interview shows. There needs to be some measure of design and control for them to work. Filmmakers do not have a license to disappear, or to bore.

But the irrepressibly manic Williams is nowhere on view here. We don't even get that diversion. Instead, he's subdued to the point of background noise, a faint hum.

Whatever the filmmakers were paid for this should be reimbursed, with a suitable penalty drawn from their pre-existing bank accounts. A feeble premise, compounded by asinine "plot" developments and mediocre supporting actors makes for a moronic 100 minutes.

Director Ken Kwapis and his undistinguished lot of writers (four) have spent their careers in painfully routine series TV, and the addled sit-com mentality weighs down every dreary scene. Kwapis, who showed promise with his second feature, the far superior "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" (2005), has taken a huge step backward.

Mandy Moore and John Krasinski make a cute couple. Then again, so do the inanimate miniatures atop a wedding cake. And the screenplay renders them just about as interesting.

Newly engaged Ben Murphy (Krasinski), a coach, allows his fiancee, flower shop owner Sadie Jones (Moore), to talk him into a premarital workshop run by one Rev. Frank (Williams), hip pastor of Jones' family church, St. Augustine's. And the reverend won't bestow his blessing on the pending union until they run the gauntlet of his marriage-preparatory course. Naturally, the program entails various witless classes, inane homework assignments, crude bits of slapstick and much covert surveillance on the part of Frank and his annoyingly precocious reverend-in-training.

Jones rolls with the punches, but it's Murphy — notwithstanding the unfortunate audience — who absorbs the brunt of the abuse.

Williams, a man genuinely touched with genius, might as well have phoned this one in, so flat is his performance. At least Moore and Krasinski make an effort. But they never had a chance, not with this leaden bomb.

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.