Licence to Wed

Most sensible people realised some time ago that sitting through a Robin Williams comedy was about as much fun as drilling into your own skull and then spooning raw globs of brain matter into your mouth.

Thankfully, Williams, hitherto intoxicated with his own supposed hilarity, seems to have finally realised that his greatest talent may be the power to instil unease.

Following on from scary turns in One Hour Photoand Insomnia, Robin turns up in Licence to Wedas a deranged clergyman with an unhealthy interest in sex.

Licence to Wedfinds Reverend Robin leading Mandy Moore and John Krasinski through a course intended to prepare couples for marriage. He engineers a fight between the groom and his potential in-laws. He tries to engage the bride-to-be in lascivious bedroom talk. He breaks into the couple's apartment and places listening devices about the place.

It is, perhaps, best not to consider the nature of the hold he has over the young orphan who accompanies him everywhere, but, after considering the damaged look in the poor lad's eyes, most audiences will gleefully applaud Krasinski when he finally punches Robin in the face. Kick him in the kidneys, John. Give him a Chinese burn. This one's for Bicentennial Man. Take that for Patch Adams.

Licence to Wedis, sad to relate, a comedy, and - bizarre as it may seem - we are expected to find the activities of this demented old pervert charming and hilarious. Director Ken Kwapis, who previously brought us The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, has inadvertently created a quite terrifying counter-reality here.

Moore, still looking like an escapee from Up with People, and Krasinski, as charismatic as processed cheese, spread numbing degrees of blandness about a deadened universe whose deity feels able to appoint the gurning nincompoop from Flubber as his representative on earth.

If all this does not sound frightening enough, be warned that in the final reel Robin attempts a Jamaican accent. You'll wake up screaming for weeks afterwards.