Darcy (Jennifer Lopez) and Tom (Josh Duhamel) have organised a destination wedding for their families at a resort in the Philippines.
As the couple begins to have doubts about their nuptials, the resort is raided by a group of masked men with guns.
As the only guests who are not captured, it falls to the couple to defeat the bad guys and save their families - they just have to work out if they actually want to be together any more.
No pressure then…
I try to avoid trailers, but I caught this one on social media and it sucked me in.
Jennifer Lopez has a spotty record with romcoms, but this movie feels like a half-step in the right direction.
At first, the movie feels like old Lopez - she is trying to play a meek, ordinary person who is slightly overwhelmed by the chaos around her.
Once she has to get into action, Lopez is on surer footing - calling Duhamel out for his ridiculous ideas, getting them out of trouble, and improvising weapons.
The movie is based on the familiar dynamic of the accidental action hero, and Lopez is great.
One wishes the movie around her were a bit better.
Some things are out of the filmmakers’ control - the movie was made in 2021, so suffers from that slightly contained quality (lack of extras, some green-screen backdrops and high key lighting that makes everything look like a sitcom). To its credit, some of the exterior footage looks like it was shot on location, and both stars get suitably scuffed up as the movie progresses.
As her beau, Josh Duhamel is serviceable, although the character and performance are so rote, I kept wondering what Channing Tatum - who was great in last year’s superior action comedy The Lost City - would have done with the role.
The rest of the cast are fine. Jennifer Coolidge is dependably scattered as Lopez’s future mother in law - she does not get a lot to do, but she does fire a machine gun at the end, which is something.
Lenny Kravitz is fun casting as Duhamel’s rival, but he is less convincing as the film’s villain.
As an action comedy, Shotgun Wedding is a great high concept, but the execution is a little underwhelming.
The movie fumbles some familiar elements, starting with their own dynamic as a couple.
The couple’s conflict comes down to a lack of communication but this is communicated in a single scene right before the villains attack the hotel.
As their argument progresses, the couple expose so many fault lines that I was wondering why they were together. It feels like the screenwriters are forcing the characters apart for the purpose of tension for the rest of the movie.
There is nothing wrong with showing a couple’s flaws, but the way this movie forces out that conflict feels contrived. Maybe if the couple had better chemistry, or the earlier scenes had been able to seed those cracks with economy, it would work.
I am a fan of cutting to the bone, and getting a movie started as quickly as possible, but for this movie, and this relationship, I needed a little more meat.
Once the action gets going, and our couple are falling apart, the movie picks up a bit.
Our heroes are cuffed together for most of the film, and the script throws in some decent obstacles for gags, such as Lopez having to hold a live grenade (while they are chased by the pirates).
While this section is watchable, I wish the relationship was more defined - there is a lot of exposition about what their relationship is like instead of showing the viewer through their dynamic and interactions.
Duhamel is never bad, but he is never that essential either. It might be down to Lopez’s charisma, but when her character hacks her dress down and grabs a shotgun, I wished this movie had centred around her as a solo action hero.
While intended for theatres, Shotgun Wedding feels better suited for streaming - it is not that funny, nor that action-packed, but it is just above watchable.
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