Sadie (Mandy Moore) and Ben (John Krasinski) are young, good-looking and in love. Before they tie the knot Sadie insists that they submit to a marriage preparation course taught by Reverend Frank (Robin Williams). Trouble is the lessons seem to be designed to drive them further apart rather than bring them together. Will they survive Rev. Frank’s teachings and walk down the aisle or will Sadie get cold feet?
I think you already know the answer and that’s the problem with License to Wed. It is the very definition of banal, formulaic romantic comedy and it is one of the worst movies of the year, and that’s saying something in a year that gave us The Hills Have Eyes 2, Wild Hogs and The Reaping.
I don’t even know where to begin describing what’s wrong here, but I’ll give it a go. Firstly someone has to tell Robin Williams to stop. Just stop making every movie that comes down the pike. Please take the time to read the scripts before agreeing to show up on set and grab the paycheck. He makes too many movies, and hasn’t been funny on film for a very long time.
His Rev. Frank is an obsessive control freak disguised as a care giver who should be arrested and thrown in jail, not entrusted with the welfare of young people. Fine. It’s a comedic premise gone wrong. I can accept that. What I can’t accept is how unfunny the movie, and Robin Williams is. The people writing the movie and particularly Rev. Frank’s dialogue seem to have simply swallowed a Henny Youngman joke book, regurgitating gags that we’ve seen and heard many times before and never need to see or hear again.
John Krasinski, so funny as Jim on The Office, and Mandy Moore are both wasted in forgettable, bland leading roles. The only high point is the inclusion of several of Krasinski’s Office cast mates in small supporting roles. As a snotty jewelry store clerk, a nagging wife and overweight belly dancer they inject a small dose of much needed humor to the story, but it’s not enough to rescue this turkey.
License to Wed is wrongheaded on many levels—it’s a silly look at married life, the characters are immature and bland—but it’s biggest sin is that it simply isn’t funny.
Promised Land is one of those message movies you know is going to end with a BIG SPEECH, and you just hope it’s an entertaining ride until the final oration. In this case I think the movie let its sense of earnestness overpower the entertainment fact. It’s good, likeable actors in a story that might have been better served in documentary form, rather than the contrived drama presented here.
Matt Damon (who also co-wrote the script with co-star John Krasinski) stars as Steve Butler, a charming salesman sent to a small Pennsylvania farming community to lease land for a giant natural gas company’s fracking project. For him it’s a personal crusade; he believes he’s transforming the lives of the cash-strapped farmers. For his partner Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand) it’s a job that simply keeps her away from her young son. Complicating matters is Dustin Noble (Krasinski), an environmental activist who, as his last name might imply, comes to town to raise the alarm about the real cost of Steve and Sue’s business offer.
An issue movie with a point of view is nothing new. But this one really wears its sleeve on its sleeve. It’s a Davey and Goliath story that relies on the charm and likability of its cast to sell the idea that fracking is bad, and the corporations who dupe cash strapped farmers into leasing their land are evil.
Getting people to understand the point of the movie, however, sucks a great deal of the drama away. The scenes describing the harmful effects of fracking are clunky. It’s hard to make talk of water table pollution dramatic, and while “Promised Land” makes an attempt by giving much of the heavy lifting to Hal Holbrook, the grand old man of the cast, it’s still only as dramatic as a high school science class lecture.
The movie gets many of the details right—it’s set in a town where the general store is called Rob’s Guns, Groceries, Guitars and Gas and people wear either “flannel or camo”—and its heart is certainly in the right place but unlike movies like “Erin Brockovich” which managed to mix message and medium, “Promised Land” is crushed under the weight of its own heavy hand.
Like the title suggests, ” Big Miracle” is a big movie with big stars like Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski, big ideas–culture clashes, network news parodies–big running time–almost two hours–but most of all it has a big heart.
Krasinski plays Adam Carlson an ambitious television reporter paying his dues in Alaska. When he uncovers a story about three whales trapped beneath the ice in the remote community of Barrow the story goes national, attracting the attention of everyone from his ex girlfriend, a Greenpeace activist played by Drew Barrymore to an oil baron (Ted Danson) to the American public and even Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev (Favorite line in the movie? “Gorby, it’s Ronnie!”).
“Big Miracle” has many story threads running throughout. The plight of he whales is the starting int for the film to examine the culture of the north, the ruthlessness of the news business, Cold War co-operation between the US and Russia, the oil business and there’s even a love story thrown in for good measure.
This many ideas shouldn’t really work, but somehow the film’s earnestness helps everything gel. No great answers are provided and most everything is painted in broad family friendly strokes, but like I said in the intro, the film has heart and in this case that goes a long way.
Having said that it also has to be noted that the whale puppets used throughout are smarter and have more soul than many of the human characters. Barrymore in particular seems like hysterical stereotype than effective activist but it’s worth getting past her histrionics to catch a glimpse of a certain Alaskan celebrity who makes a brief, unexpected cameo near the end.
