Audiences are either going to love or hate Shotgun Wedding, the new romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel, which is out now on Prime Video. Lopez has cornered the rom-com market playing brides whose weddings are doomed, but Shotgun Wedding gives Lopez a chance to flex some action muscles too, and she proves she’s game for anything, no matter how ridiculous. For some, the ridiculousness could be too much to bear, but personally, I found it a delightful escape.
Opening Shot: It’s night at the Mahal Island Resort in the Philippines. Darcy (Lopez), looks around for her fiance Tom (Duhamel) and sighs, then brushes herself off and enters the room where her rehearsal dinner is being held, alone, no sign of Tom anywhere.
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The Gist: Tom and Darcy are grown adults who have been together for four years and have decided to get married. Darcy’s dad Robert (Cheech Marin) is a millionaire, but she and Tom have rejected his offer to pay for their wedding, since they’re older, established, and have money of their own (well, Tom is struggling because he just lost his contract as a minor league baseball player, but Darcy’s doing fine as a lawyer). Tom has gone a little overboard by planning a destination wedding in the Philippines for their close friends and family to attend. Because they’re not super-rich, Tom is DIY-ing a lot of the wedding himself, for instance, on the night of their rehearsal dinner, Tom is so dedicated to making every detail perfect, he chooses to hot glue string lights to pineapple centerpieces rather than pay attention to his gorgeous fiancee’s sexual advances. I mean. No one can ignore JLo and her otherworldly glow, but somehow Tom does. Darcy never wanted a big wedding, or any wedding at all for that matter, so Tom’s fixation on the perfect day is bumming her out.
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Then there’s the matter of Sean (Lenny Kravitz), Darcy’s ex whom she met in the Peace Corps in Bali, but who ended up going to work for her rich dad after they broke up. Sean helicopters in – shirt unbuttoned, abs and pecs sculpted from marble – to the rehearsal dinner despite never even RSVP-ing to the wedding (Rude! But also an eventual major plot point), and everyone there ogles him. The unspoken sentiment in the room is, how could Darcy have given him up for Tom??
While Darcy tries to seduce Tom by prying him away from his pineapples with fairy lights, he admits that Sean’s presence is distracting him; why is this (distractingly hot) guy even here? Before they can resolve this argument, Tom’s mom, Carol (Jennifer Coolidge) barges into their room to tell them that it’s bad luck for the bride and groom to stay together on the night of their wedding, so Tom shuffles off to sleep in his parents’ room. The next day, Tom and Darcy meet before the wedding privately because she wants to finish their conversation, she’s uncomfortable that they went to bed mad, but she has to explain that she never wanted all of this. This wedding has changed Tom, he’s been obsessed with it and inattentive to anything she wants, and it’s been that way for months. Things escalate and they get into a brutal argument that ends with Darcy throwing her ring at Tom before storming off. Meanwhile, all the guests have gathered for the ceremony and are wondering where the couple is, when a group of masked pirates wielding machine guns barrels in and forces everyone into the resort pool, explaining that they’re holding the guests hostage unless Robert wires them $45 million. Tthe pirates demand to see Tom and Darcy who are off arguing.
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Initially oblivious to the dangers around them, Tom and Darcy realize what’s going on and turn into action heroes, resolved to save their families from these terrorists. Though they’re unlikely and inept heroes, they MacGuyver themselves, using the only tools at their disposal – hairspray, a cake knife, Darcy’s hair extensions, etc. – to defeat the bad guys, all while their bewildered guests stand around in the pool bickering, flirting, and trying to charm the terrorists into not killing them.
Photo: Amazon PrimeWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? There are any number of wedding disaster movies you could compare Shotgun Wedding to, but given the tropical locale and the bickering couple who love to hate one another, it felt like some version of last year’s Clooney-Roberts rom-com Ticket To Paradise. The whole “inept action hero” shtick also reminded me of the Sandra Bullock-Channing Tatum adventure romance The Lost City.
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Our Take: You only go into a movie like Shotgun Wedding wanting pure, silly fun, and that’s exactly what the film provides. It’s the entire reason the supporting cast is peppered with actors like Jennifer Coolidge who, at one point while being held hostage, offers the terrorists information about herself like, “I dream of going to Ireland,” and “I was a later bloomer, my teeth didn’t come in till I was 14.” She explains, “I saw it on Good Morning America; if you humanize yourself, they let you live!” Coolidge is having her moment right now thanks to The White Lotus, but it’s supporting roles like this that are her bread and butter, and she’s great. Many of the film’s other actors, like Cheech Marin and Sonia Braga, feel underused, though. Even D’Arcy Carden and Lenny Kravitz, whose characters’ backstories become much more essential to the plot, aren’t given many memorable lines or enough to do.
But, let’s face it, we all came here for Lopez. Despite sharing top billing with Duhamel, this is her movie. The role of Tom initially belonged to Ryan Reynolds, and then Armie Hammer, but was recast after Hammer’s allegations of sexual assault came to light in 2021. Josh Duhamel is solid as Tom, he’s fine. I think fine is all we need from Tom. Darcy is the one who gets to throw the grenades and use the cake knife that Carol gifts her as a wedding present to finish off the last of the bad guys.
Speaking of the bad guys, who are these terrorists though, and why did they choose Tom and Darcy’s wedding? You’ll find out, although the motive is pretty flimsy, but in this movie, the how and why are incidental, they’re just a means to an end. That end, of course, is watching Lopez run through the jungle in a torn wedding dress and shapewear killing bad guys in ridiculous ways, and watching Duhamel’s Tom sustain a bloody “flap” on his hand after getting it caught in a deli meat slicer. Sometimes you want a movie by an auteur, something cinematic and affecting. Apocalypse Now? Yes, bring on the horror of war, of the jungle. And sometimes you want the antidote to that, the complete inverse of reality and truth, and that’s Shotgun Wedding. It’s a grenade launched in the jungle as a punchline, not a statement.
Sex and Skin: A pantsless Darcy tries to seduce Tom on their wedding night, but they’re interrupted.
Parting Shot: The bride and groom and their guests, all filthy and covered in blood, assemble on the beach at sunset to finally watch the couple exchange their vows. A rogue firework goes off, and the shell-shocked crowd, who spent the whole day evading bullets and grenades, jumps. Tom’s best man Ricky (Desmin Borges) yells, “Sorry! There was one firework left and I thought it would be fun and beautiful and poignant but it’s absolutely not!” Everyone laughs, Tom and Darcy kiss, and the credits roll with footage from the “wedding reception” which looks like it was actually the cast wrap party, as everyone in the cast sings along to “Walk Like An Egyptian,” I guess because there are no songs specifically about the Philippines.
Sleeper Star: There are a lot of funny supporting cast members in the film, including Callie Hernandez as Darcy’s dry, deadpan sister Jamie and D’Arcy Carden’s energy-healer-yoga-instructor, but Jennifer Coolidge as Tom’s mother Carol is great. She’s playing a classic Coolidge character, the type who is out of touch and living on her own planet, but she’s got some good lines to deliver, and she delivers them well.
Most Pilot-y Line: “I’ve been questioning everything lately. What if the wedding’s not perfect? What if your parents never like me? What does life look like after baseball? But not once did I wonder if I’d be walking handcuffed through the jungle with a live grenade,” Tom tells Darcy as they flee from the pirates, holding a live grenade that they don’t know how to dispose of.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Shotgun Wedding is stupid fun, and to its credit, it embraces that. It knows it’s not highbrow cinema, so it leans into the silliness. Forcing the entire wedding party to stand in a swimming pool while they’re being held hostage? Ridiculous. Having Lopez run through a jungle holding a live grenade until she can safely dispose of it, dropping it on two of the pirates while she’s ziplining? Absurd. And yet. AND YET. I laughed a lot and I felt satisfied when it was over. This is the kind of movie you want to watch when everything is horrible and you need an escape.
