When I first saw the ads and trailers for the new movie License to Wed, it appeared to me that there was an anti-Christian agenda behind it, with Robin Williams playing a minister, Reverend Frank, who puts a young couple through a series of "tests" to ensure that they are indeed ready to be married.
It seemed to me that Williams’s character was intended to be shown as a hypocrite with perverse, voyeuristic impulses and a strong strain of sexual jealousy.
Williams has long made evident his hatred of Christianity and Christians, so it seemed obvious to me that this was not going to be a nuanced portrait of the religious implications of marriage, much less a positive portrayal of the importance and sanctity of marriage.
As a result, I put it on my list of movies to avoid watching in the theater even for scientific purposes, and perhaps catch it on cable TV down the road.
It appears that my initial impression was correct.
As the Christian Science Monitor critic reports, the film does indeed have the nasty subtext I saw in the previews:
Aided by a creepy pint-sized kid (Josh Flitter) whom he is mentoring in the Ministers For Tomorrow program, Rev. Frank puts Sadie and Ben through a series of rigorous test apparently designed to test their love.. . . .
On the surface, Frank is simply preparing the couple for the worst, but in fact he seems intent on breaking up the engagement. His bedchamber espionage is, at best, smarmy— the little kid joins in on the eavesdropping—and so is his barely suppressed ogling of Sadie. Director Ken Kwapis and his screenwriters don’t seem to be aware of what they are perpetrating here. They want us to embrace Frank as a lovable eccentric who wants only the best for Ben and Sadie. He’s a cutup with a collar—a do-gooder.
But Williams makes this impossible, the critic notes:
As for Frank, his would-be good-heartedness is belied by Williams’s performance, which is full of tics and sneers. Williams is too sharp a comic not to know what’s going on here but the script requires him to be lovable. So he ends up trying to have it both ways: He’s a huggy bear with sleazeball vibes.
Clearly this plays into prevailing cultural stereotypes that most Christians are moral hypocrites. Let’s hope that few people are taken in by this wolf in sheep’s clothing.
I fully agree with you on this point, Henry. The problem with conservative critics of pop culture is their tendency to judge works based on surface factors and not their underlying meaning. Of course, if the surface factors are really awful or excellent, one must acknowledge them. In this case I think we judge the significance of the various aspects of the film differently, which I think is just fine. I appreciate your perspective on this.
If one rejects the explicit motifs of a film or text when the text contains obvious metaphors, then one would have to reject a lot of scripture. As just one example, the Prophet Hosea comes to mind. God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute. Not just any prostitute, the prostitute Hosea married, at God’s command, was a prostitute who continued to be a prostitute as evidenced by the fact that Hosea had to buy her back, again at God’s command.
Hanging out with sinners like prostitutes, no less marrying one, is condemned other places in scripture, like Proverbs. The explicit motif of Hosea is not one a follower of God ought to follow. The message of Hosea becomes clear when it is understood that the marriage of Hosea and the prostitute and their subsequent relationship is a metaphor for the relationship between God and his people and His love for them even though they follow after other gods.
I do not intend to elevate a film to the level of scripture. My point is that literature, film, and the Bible all use metaphor and other literary devises to communicate a message. In scripture, in literature, and in film, if we reject something merely because it contains elements with which we disagree, we may miss an important message.
This sounds plausible, Henry, though it’s important not to let an affection for symbols and subtexts overcome one’s critical faculties in assessing the explicit ideas and motifs of a narrative.
I have just one question. Did you actually see License to Wed? My wife and I rented it this weekend, and neither of us saw any “nasty subtext.” The movie is a straight-up romantic comedy. It deals with communication within the context of marriage.
Taking the film as a whole, there are a few (actually, VERY few) elements of the film I would change. Among others, a couple of the jokes during the Children’s Bible Class were not appropriate for kids, and I did not understand the purpose of the baseball throwing/”healing” scene.
Granted, the film uses caricature and metaphor to illustrate complex concepts quickly. Caricature and metaphor are more easily identified in written fiction. The inherent realism of film tends to mask metaphors because films appear to be about “real” people and “real” situations.
I submit that License to Wed is, in part or in whole, metaphorical. Ben and Sadie represent the normal young couple in American culture with the normal communication problems that American couples have. The film attempts to explore what would happen if those hidden communication problems were exposed and handled (or, mishandled).
Moments in the film require the suspension of disbelief, but no greater that any other of the last 10 good movies I have seen. None of the above affects the film’s main theme. The film uses humor to break through the defenses of the audience, so that the underlying serious message can get through.
I though the film accomplished this fairly well.
Good question about Williams’s character, Joe. The website doesn’t specify the denomination, and that may be deliberate on the filmmakers’ part. From what I’ve seen, Reverend Frank appears to be an Episcopal priest, which sort of straddles the two camps of Protestantism and Catholicism, interestingly enough. Perhaps another reader can give us definitive info on that.
I changed the name of the site to take the emphasis off of the individual behind it and place it on the content of the site. The change doesn’t signify anything more than that, and the content of the site will remain the same.
S.T., the only question that I have regarding this movie, which I have no intention of giving up any precious moment of my time whatsoever to see in any shape or form, is the Robin Williams character supposed to be a Catholic priest or a Protestant minster? The reason I ask is that on one hand he is called a reverend, but from the pictures, he’s wearing vestments & looks like a priest. Anyway, I feel that my time is better spent reading The American Culture (why the name change?)