License to Wed - It's Alright!!

Image from Wikipedia
Article as submitted by me to Helium.com

The only thing that led to me seeing this movie was a rainy afternoon, a few hours to kill and the small possibility that the gracefully aging Robin Williams would provide enough laughs to sustain some form of entertainment.

Not normally a fan of bland Hollywood formulaic comedies I was surprised that for me this supplied a moderate amount of entertainment.

Sadie Jones (Mandy Moore) and Ben Murphy (John Krasinski) think they are in love. Like many young couples they have never argued and the thought that life would ever have bad moments for them is far from either of their minds. When Ben asks Sadie to marry him at Sadie's parents 30th anniversary the obvious answer is yes.

Ben's idea for a simple Caribbean wedding is knocked aside by Sadie as she explains it's always been her dream to be married in her local church using the family Reverend, Reverend Frank (Robin Williams). The first sign of how this relationship exists shows as Ben just swallows and agrees with Mandy with no fight.

So even before Reverend Frank is introduced we know a rocky ride is ahead.

After meeting Reverend Frank and finding out that the only date available in the next few years is in 3 weeks Sadie and Ben agree excitedly... then Reverend Frank lets them know that they will have to complete his prenuptial course before he will agree to perform the ceremony.

So with only a few weeks to complete a course that normally takes a few months Ben reluctantly becomes the butt of the joke in this movie as Williams in a slightly tamed version of his normal style bullies and belittles this man to a point of absolute break down in the relationship.

Even after Ben spills some info from the past of Reverend Frank things are still against him. But maybe Reverend Frank's attempts to break this relationship are not what they seem. Like 1 hour photo (A Williams masterpiece, in my opinion) Reverend Frank turns out to be acting for the good of the couple and as predicted love prevails and the marriage finally takes place in the Caribbean and with Reverend Frank. So everybody leaves the movie feeling mildly happy as usual.

Most of the comedy in this movie is provided by Williams' antics and cruelty towards Ben. When he gives the couple 2 robotic babies to look after Ben is lumbered with most of the work and quietly suffers in order to appease Sadie. The babies are incredibly annoying and Rev. Frank's mini sidekick (An annoying kid from the Ministers of the Future) has controls to turn up their behavior. Baby abuse normally isn't funny but when robots are involved it became a belly laugh part of the movie.

I would say if bored and nothing else is on this movie may provide some entertainment so don't write it off straight away. However don't expect anything new.

Williams is still due another classic comedy.

Transformers - My thoughts

Here is my quick review of the latest Transformers movie as posted on Helium.

Transformers the Movie was the first ever movie I went to see.

At 5 years old I don't remember the whole thing but remember being marvelled at the huge war and years later remember hearing a rumour of a little swearing hidden in it's depths.

So of course when the new film was announced I was eager to go see it and have been keeping tabs on it's progress since the first teaser trailor.

Shortly after the movie started I realised that this film wasn't aimed at the scores of current 5 year olds that are playing with the latest incarnation of the transformers toy line. This film was aimed at me and the other 5 year olds who sat in the cinema over 20 years ago with our mouths agape totally consumed.

So what did I make of this film. I did enjoy it but it was very hard to digest everything. Far too many characters and complete inconsistency between humour and serious political points, women with the most stuck fast make up ever, even after a huge city fight they manage to keep that lipstick right where it is supposed to be, and many plot holes. For instance it was finitely explained how and why these alien robots are disguised as everyday human machines (well almost everyday machines) but then there was no explanation as to how Megatron managed to become a state of the art jet when he had been isolated since the time that tea clippers were hi-tech. I guess a big slow floating Megatron would not have had the same effect during the tense well executed battle scenes.

The battle scenes and transforming special effects were amazing though and made the movie well worth seeing, well that and a small role for the type cast Bernie Mac that had me and gladly most others in the cinema in hysterics.

Here is a link to another bloggers review of the original movie if anyone is interessted. Like mine it's a quick review without too much detail but a fun quick read. http://boofberg.blogspot.com/2006/11/review-of-transformers-movie-20th.html