When it comes to corny romantic comedies, You May Not Kiss the Bride, a movie directed by Rob Hedden, places more emphasis on the corniness rather than the romance or the comedy.  It stars Katharine McPhee (“Smash”) and Dave Annable (“Brothers & Sisters”), and tells the story of a handsome pet photographer named Bryan Lighthouse (Annable) who is forced to marry the daughter of a lethal Croatian mobster (McPhee), resulting in a horrific honeymoon where the beautiful bride gets kidnapped.

Both Annable and McPhee fit the criteria for a great leading romantic couple. They are good-looking, and yet still ordinary enough to be relatable. Unfortunately, their onscreen chemistry is as sexy and magnetic as a bowl of soup. Throughout the film, there are not enough of those little moments that suggest a spark is igniting between the main characters. For this reason, it feels extremely abrupt when the leading male all of a sudden realizes his love for the leading lady and endures a deathly chopper ride, a car chase, explosions and a medley of other life-threatening accounts to try to save her.

Rob Schneider plays an over-acted helicopter driver and island-dweller named Ernesto who creates problems for the leading man fueled by slapstick comedy and hyper-sexualized gestures. Though some of Schneider’s actions will elicit a couple of smiles from the audience, the majority of his lines are trying a little too hard. He does, however, put on a pretty hilarious accent that sounds more Spanish than Tahitian, but it works.

The major highlights of the film are the scenes featuring the main character’s crazy mother (Kathy Bates) who provides her son with unconventional motherly advice while on house arrest. In those scenes, Bates delivers each line with her usual raw humor that resonates well for the role. It is also worth mentioning the loony ex-girlfriend, played by Mena Suvari, who adds some fairly entertaining moments to the film with her raunchy foreplay costumes and amusing self-centered attitude.

Overall, You May Not Kiss the Bride is the type of movie that people should watch on the airplane when there is nothing else to do. It is entertaining enough to keep the audience engaged, but it is not a movie audiences should go out of their way to see.

Grade: C

You May Not Kiss the Bride releases September 21.