Worth: $9.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jennifer Lopez, Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Coolidge, Sonia Braga, Cheech Marin, Selena Tan, D’Arcy Carden, Callie Hernandez, Desmin Borges, Steve Coulter, Alberto Isaac, Lenny Kravitz
Intro:
… the kind of film that should be put in front of a firing squad and executed immediately for its crimes against action romcoms and cinema in general.
The Jennifer Lopez renaissance was in full swing with her incredible performance in Lorene Scafaria’s 2019 film Hustlers, and again with the charming, if somewhat slight, romcom, Marry Me by Kat Corio. Who would have thought that it would be Jason Moore, the director of Pitch Perfect, who would shuffle JLo back to absolute mediocrity?
Written by Mark Hammer (Two Night Stand), Shotgun Wedding manages to gather the talents of some of the funniest people in acting and mercilessly waste them. If someone were to tell you that one of the unfunniest comedies around would feature Jennifer Coolidge, D’Arcy Carden and Cheech Marin, would you believe it? Within twenty minutes of Shotgun Wedding, not only would you believe it, you’d be praying for respite for the actors and yourself.
Darcy Rivera (Jennifer Lopez) is about to be married to her long-term boyfriend Tom Fowler (Josh Duhamel) in a big family do on an island resort in the Philippines. Tom is an ex professional baseball player who has been scuttled out of the league for underperforming. Darcy used to part of the Peace Corps where she met her ex-fiancé Sean (Lenny Kravitz) who now works for her wealthy father, Robert (Cheech Marin). Robert got divorced from the snobbish Renata (Sonia Braga) and is now dating a hippy-drippy yoga teacher named Harriet (D’Arcy Carden).
Robert and Renata don’t like Tom. They also don’t like Tom’s parents, Carol (Jennifer Coolidge) and Larry (Steve Coulter). At the wedding rehearsal, the dynamics are set up between the characters – and they’re about as deep as a puddle. In a surprise turn of events, Sean arrives at the party invited by Robert. Sean is every bit the sex-symbol, from his turning up in a private helicopter to his seeming inability to wear a shirt unless it’s open to the waist.
The night before the wedding, Darcy is trying to convince Tom that they could spend a little down and dirty time together. Tom, however, is too preoccupied with hot gun gluing fairy lights onto pineapples to notice her until she really pushes the point home (cue shots of JLo’s booty). The two begin to squabble over what a big deal Tom is making about the wedding, Darcy preferring they’d eloped. They’re interrupted by Carol who makes some remark about it being bad luck for the bride and groom to spend the night together, and unresolved and unsatisfied the couple part for the night.
Pirates invade the island and take the wedding party sans Tom and Darcy hostage. What follows is a predictable melee of events, which sees the still squabbling Darcy and Tom cuffed together while trying to take out the pirates. The whole thing is ridiculously formulaic and not at all aided by Hammer’s inert script and Moore’s uninspired direction.
There are a few relatively decent action beats and occasionally some of the comedy works – Jennifer Coolidge really does a lot of heavy lifting and unexpectedly, so does Lenny Kravitz. But on the whole, the movie is bland and faceless.
Shotgun Wedding will remind audiences of better comedies with similar premises – even recent trifles like The Lost City and Ticket to Paradise spring to mind. It doesn’t help that Josh Duhamel is a charisma free zone, or that Jennifer Lopez, someone who can do action and comedy well (people will never forget Out of Sight), is reduced to a one-note character.
From the awful CGI to the cringeworthy credits scene, to the complete lack of chemistry between the leads, there is almost nothing to recommend the movie. Shotgun Wedding is the kind of film that should be put in front of a firing squad and executed immediately for its crimes against action romcoms and cinema in general.
