I see you driving round town with the girl I love, and I’m like…

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[5.44]

Doug Robertson: When writing any tune, you have to ask yourself a lot of questions. Questions like: “Is this going to add anything worthwhile to the already overflowing pool of recorded music?”, “What do all these buttons do?” and “Should I have a chicken or a ham sandwich for lunch?” But of all the possible questions the most important one is surely “Will my gran like this?” If the answer is “Yes,” then not only do you need to start completely from scratch, but you also need to take a long hard look in the mirror and think about exactly what the hell you think you’re doing with your life. Bruno, I will happily supply the mirror.
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Jer Fairall: I’ll side with the anti-Bruno Mars crowd maybe 50% of the time, but he gets damn near everything right here: a sing-songy and almost Broadway-worthy chorus, the heedless “who cares if we’re trash / got a pocket full of cash we can blow” tempering the overall cutesiness of the thing, the concession of “if we wake up and you wanna break up / that’s cool” and the pleas of “just say ‘I doooooo’” adding tinges of unspoken melancholy that Katy Perry’s “Waking Up In Vegas” was far too oblivious to get anywhere near, even the forehead-slappingly obvious touch that is the church bell chimes ringing throughout the chorus. The best Bruno Mars song to date, yes, but maybe also the best possible Bruno Mars song, ever.  
[8]

Brad Shoup: More so than almost all of his peers, Mars is a born entertainer; he makes pandering his personal business. Finally, with this odd, sleek little charger, he’s hit the sweet spot. What gets me is the easygoing nature of Mars’ suggestion, as our couple leaps from the club to the next morning’s breakup. It’s more or less the same concept as “Waking Up in Vegas,” but with a sunnier disposition and deceptively big-sounding touches. His settling into “I do” is a pure moment, at last, not a simulacrum demanded by genre.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Bruno Mars is frequently terrible, but he’s rarely boring. Who knew that drunken Vegas weddings needed their own sweetly unsentimental, non-country anthem? I don’t know how universal the sentiment is (cue the record-breaking reign at #1), but it’s an underserved one, which even without the delicately balanced production would make this worth listening to.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Mars works so hard and is so desperate at being ingratiating that all of the clockwork rude mechanicals are obvious under a mediocre attempt at smoothing things over. The woman said no, and he is begging her yes, but he’s trying to be sweet and cute about it. It lends a really creepy vibe to the whole mess.  
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Imagine this as Bruno Mars’ “Tonight (I’m Fucking You),” bowdlerized with mawwiage because this is a Bruno Mars track and because weddings have nightfalls. They might not get tomorrow; why not do it tonight?
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Jonathan Bradley: Mars is a pop classicist more in love with concepts than characters, and as such, his songs are stuck entirely within the confines of their run time. They never suggest a backstory bigger than the lyric sheet and never contain ideas large enough to snap off and root themselves in a listener’s brain. The sole point is in the title: for four minutes, Bruno wants to Marry You, because that is something “dumb to do” that even “trash” can partake in after “shots of Patron.” That’s not necessarily a problem with Mars’s style; “Grenade,” for instance, performs a similarly transient emotional tableau with impressive precision and detail. All “Marry You” has, however, is an almost believably winsome propulsion and church bells slathered over the second half like mayonnaise on a chicken sandwich. As a con, it’s deftly performed but cripplingly transparent.
[5]

Al Shipley: I almost got sucked in, just by virtue of this being less overbearing and instantly tiresome as “The Lazy Song” or “Grenade,” and won over by the track’s simple charms. But then I listened closely and noticed how that hook doesn’t quite pop and how terrible those lyrics about “dancing juice” are.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The sampled choir bells are a nice touch; Bruno has often sung like a out-of-tune carillon. This guy is so devoted to goofballdom as a matter of principle that I can’t dislike this underwritten fluff, but he lacks the range and concentration to turn this into the standard he hopes it becomes. I’m sure he’d make a great husband and dad, though.
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