DONT ARM THE BRIDE (SHOTGUN WEDDING)

 

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Fresh from marrying Owen Wilson in one lame movie, it's good to see Jennifer Lopez stretching herself by marrying Josh Duhamel in another.

If things had originally gone to plan, her latest onscreen nuptials would have been with Ryan Reynolds.

When that didn't work out, it was due to be Armie Hammer until some rather unpleasant questions about his personal life derailed his career.

Enter Josh Duhamel, one time star of the NBC series 'Las Vegas' and the 'Transformers' movies.

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But let's not be hard on Duhamel for inheriting this role when there are plenty of other reasons to rant and rage about this terrible excuse for an action comedy.

As Pomona pointed out last month, J-Lo is no stranger to the wedding genre, having been in seven previous films where her characters were planning to go up the aisle.

You can almost feel the writer of 'Shortgun Wedding,' though, Mark Hammer wetting himself with excitement at his take on the genre.

Lopez gets to hold grenades, wield a knife and fire guns in this wedding tale. It's a J-Lo movie with a twist, except it is trying to deliver that twist with a really bad limp.

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Lopez plays Darcy Rivera who arrives in an island wedding resort off the Philippines with the intention of getting hitched to Duhamel's out of form baseball pro Tom Fowler.

Both clans have been rounded up for the wedding including Tom's eccentric mum, Jennifer Coolidge's Carol Fowler and her meek husband, Steve Coulter's Larry.

Darcy's divorced parents are there too, Sonia Braga's Renata Ortiz and Cheech Marin's wealthy businessman Robert Rivera who is accompanied by his new, much younger girlfriend D'Arcy Carden's Harriet.

The bride's sister, Callie Hernandez's Jamie Rivera and Desmond Borges' Ricky also join in the celebrations.

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Tom and Darcy are shocked, however, to see her ex-fiance, Lenny Kravitz's Sean Hawkins arrive by helicopter the night before the wedding.

It soon becomes clear that Darcy isn't really all that thrilled with the wedding Tom has planned and has railroaded her into accepting.

While voicing her frustrations before the ceremony, heavily armed pirates carrying Uzis and grenades storm the island and take the wedding guests hostage in a bid to line their pockets.

The bride and groom, however, avoid capture and after rounding up the captives and forcing them to wade through the resort's swimming pool, the gang realises who's missing and send some of their members to track Darcy and Tom down.

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Equipped with no real skills to handle armed assailants, the couple somehow manage to keep out of the pirates' clutches.

But can they keep out of the gang's hands for long?

And should we care?

Watching 'Shotgun Wedding' is a rather dispiriting affair.

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Clearly pitched as a J-Lo wedding comedy meets 'Die Hard,' director Jason Moore strains for the kind of wackiness that Barbara Streisand and Ryan O'Neal aspired to in 'What's Up Doc?'

However neither Lopez nor Duhamel have the comic timing to pull it off nor do they have the screen chemistry.

Even if they did, they would struggle to make an impact as Hammer's script is as weak as a kitten, with none of the charm.

Its so-called gags are so sluggish, you can hear them huffing and puffing as they approach.

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The action sequences are so dull and formulaic, you would have more fun watching an old episode of 'The A Team'.

The script is so poor you can hear Channing Tatum chuckling at how lucky he was that Hammer's tired and woeful dialogue didn't come his way.

Moore's film is so blandly directed, it hoodwinks you into believing 'Unchartered' really wasn't all that terrible.

After five minutes, you just want it to be over.

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Five minutes is enough to te you that it is clearly crud, so why even bother? 

Having early on in her screen career shown so much promise in Steven Soderbergh's 'Out of Sight' and after raisinh hopes of a career revival three years ago with 'Hustlers,' Lopez is again back sleepwalking through a mind numbingly poor film - playing a variation on all the other romcom roles we have seen her perform over the years.

Duhamel has very little to offer the film but, then again, neither have Marin, Carden, Kravitz, Coulter, Hernandes and Borges.

Braga and Coolidge, however, ought to know better and watching them trot out low energy gags is just depressing.

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You know things are really bad when you find yourself rooting for the gun toying bad guys in a movie.

But that's what happens here and you feel it would have been a blessing if after five minutes they decide to turn Moore's movie into a short and put its lame characters out of their misery.

Not even the sight of Jennifer Coolidge firing a machine gun can save it.

With a Netflix action movie in the works with Niki Caro, J Lo may be moving into a gun toting phase.

Heaven help us.

('Shotgun Wedding' was released in cinemas in Singapore on December 28, 2022 and was made available for streaming on Amazon Prime on January 27, 2023)