It’s hard to believe that Hollywood is still making movies like You May Not Kiss the Bride.  It really feels like a castaway from the cheesy sexploitation factories of the mid-80s. 

It is an aggressively dumb romantic comedy, built on impossible-to-believe circumstances and beyond-unrealistic coincidences.  The storyline would make absolutely no sense on any level, even if the audience could be moved to care to try to figure it out.  Which they won’t be.  You May Not Kiss the Bride has divorced itself from even the slightest whiff of rational plotting.

Which in itself is not necessarily a fatal flaw.  Comedies can and often do work with fanciful premises (and that is putting it extremely kindly).  If a movie is funny enough, it can make up for its lack of realism.

However, it is just a sign of this movie’s desperation that their comic secret weapon is… umm, Rob Schneider.

Yes, Rob Schneider: the bad movie’s best friend.  He is a man who started his film career in the basement with Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and has since kept finding new and disturbing ways to go even further down.  In fairness, Rob’s bit as a swarthy, adventurous helicopter pilot is just a supporting turn, but it is symptomatic of what is wrong with this film.

Okay, I’ll try to give a thumbnail of the plot.  Strap in, it’s going to get deep here. 

Bryan (Dave Annable of Brothers and Sisters) is a photographer who specializes in taking photos of pets dressed in costumes.  After a ridiculous mishap between a cat and a dog, a Croatian mobster (Ken Davitan, the fat sidekick in Borat) decides the hapless photog owes him a big favor.  His out?  Marry the crime boss’ daughter Masha (Katharine McPhee of Smash) for a year so she can get her green card.  Of course, the girl is obviously born and raised in the US, so should not have any real problem staying in the country, but dad bollixed it by trying to bribe the INS. 

Although neither bride nor groom like the idea, they get married, go on a Polynesian honeymoon and (yawn) start to have feelings for each other.  Then she is kidnapped and he has to save her from evil mobsters with the help of a group of eccentric islanders.

Wow.  Really?  That’s the best you can do?

It is a shame, because You May Not Kiss the Bride actually has some very talented actors involved and does include some stunning Hawaiian scenery.

Former American Idol runner-up Katharine McPhee acquits herself as well as possible in the female lead.  (Note that this film has been in the can for well over a year and McPhee filmed it before making her acting breakout in NBC’s series Smash.) 

She certainly has more to do than poor Mena Suvari (American Pie, American Beauty) who is just humiliated in the role of a sex-starved assistant.  Other odd choices are Tia Carrere (Wayne’s World) as the pretty cougar waitress (she is supposed to be Rob Schneider’s cousin, explain that genealogists…), Kevin Dunn as a corrupt INS agent and former Brit footballer Vinnie Jones as a smitten hit man.  And how the hell did they talk Kathy Bates into taking the nothing role as the hero’s salacious mother?

It’s not hard to see why this movie has been sitting on a shelf somewhere.  The real question is why it is coming out now.  Perhaps they wanted to ride the coattails of McPhee’s Smash success?  Seems unlikely, Smash isn’t doing that well. 

Whatever the reason might be, it is a mistake.  Put You May Not Kiss the Bride back on the shelf where it belongs until the inevitable unsuccessful video launch.

Dave Strohler

Copyright ©2012 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: September 25, 2012.