The prospects for a coherent, hilarious and consistent American comedy seem to lessen every year, as the poor waterlogged, gassy corpse called "Evan Almighty" proved when it floated ashore recently.

So there's a temptation to think too highly of Robin Williams's uneven but occasionally funny "License to Wed." For much of the time, it's highly amusing and its cast is extremely persuasive, playing the kind of roles that kill most careers: genuinely nice people. (Young actors: Avoid nice! Nice is death! Nice is dinner theater in Milwaukee. How many times can you sing "The Sound of Music" to Wisconsinites eating from the buffet?)

The movie, however, is not without its abundant curiosities, as if director Ken Kwapis and his writers weren't sure what kind of work they were making and were left with chunks of differently toned material, some of which never fits together. In the new comedy, I guess, tonal consistency isn't a problem; if it's funny, light, dark, surrealistic, situational, blasphemous, sexual, slapsticky, it stays.

By its story alone, "License to Wed" could just as easily be a dark, dark thriller, similar to one already on Williams's resume, "One Hour Photo," that paean to inappropriate obsession. This time, instead of playing a department store photo shop employee queasily attracted to a handsome family, he plays a single minister queasily attracted to a young woman about to get married. He puts her and the beau through a kind of ordeal by marriage counseling that seems, for the longest time, calculated to drive them apart (and allow him to claim the woman for himself).

-- Stephen Hunter (July 3, 2007)

Contains heavy sexual innuendo and profanity.