Shotgun Wedding Review

Every time I think I’m done with J- Lo movies she does something to pull me right back in. I go a while in between movies but then I see something like Shotgun Wedding and I’m back in! In Shotgun Wedding, Darcy (Jennifer Lopez) and Tom (Josh Duhamel) gather their lovable-but-very-opinionated families for the ultimate destination wedding, just as the couple begins to get cold feet. And if that wasn’t enough of a threat to the celebration, suddenly everyone’s lives are in danger when the entire party is taken hostage. “’Til Death Do Us Part” takes on a whole new meaning in this hilarious, adrenaline-fueled adventure as Darcy and Tom must save their loved ones—if they don’t kill each other first.

THE GOOD

Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel do a great job in leading an amusing cast in Shotgun Wedding. The premise is that an entire wedding party becomes hostage except for the bride and groom. It doesn’t take long before the danger descends on the island and the wedding party has to improvise. Shotgun Wedding takes a lot of surprising twists in the narrative that keep the movie entertaining.  I admit that I expected ‘Out of Sight‘ Jennifer Lopez and not Maid in Manhattan J-Lo.

Shotgun Wedding assembles a great cast that will make you laugh. Darcy and Tom get into some fun comedic moments, (wait til Darcy sees the sight of blood), but so do the rest of the cast! Jennifer Coolidge has one of the best scene-stealing laugh-out-loud moments in the movie! This scene adds so much life to the movie that I forgive so much because of this moment.

Some movies are more fun you know that they can do just about anything without real consequence. Shotgun Wedding leans into that thinking with some good results. There are constantly people getting shot or shot at, blown up with hand grenades, or suffering horrifically traumatizing injuries but none of these people are the protagonists. Or their friends. Or their friends’ friends. The plot armor surrounding things leads to those fun moments like Darcy and Tom ziplining with a hand grenade and Jennifer Coolidge with an assault rifle. After a nice montage and outfit change Darcy goes from a scared helpless bridge to a gun-toting hero. It’s absolutely absurd but by this point in the movie, I’m all in. 

THE BAD

Shotgun Wedding is a fun movie but it also feels pretty predictable. There are plot points that are foreshadowed pretty easily so you can guess what will happen before it does. Early in the movie, Tom is standing on a dock setting up a boat for his wife. A guard startles Tom thinking him to be a pirate and lets us know that they are an unseen threat that we should know about. Also, everything with the brother and sister-in-law is easy to telegraph. These occurrences give comfort in knowing what’s coming next but this can also disrupt the experience with the movie.

Lenny Kravitz does not make a believable villain at all. It could be bad acting or it could be an intentional performance of comedy. Either way, a lot of his scenes don’t work for me and they come off very flat. Lenny isn’t the only guilty party as several members of the supporting cast suffer from wasted opportunities. There are multiple scenes focusing on the supporting cast at the wedding party but these scenes aren’t very funny. They could showcase the comedic talents of the people there but they suffer from weak writing and corny jokes.

Shotgun Wedding also feels longer than it needs to be.  There are a lot of fight scenes and chase scenes and explosions in Shotgun Wedding and these things are always fun. The problem is that there are way too many scenes in between the action that feels like filler. The story drags whenever focusing on the wedding party and these moments dont move forward the narrative. There are a few plot twists that, while funny, draw the movie out to a longer runtime. I love the cool action sequence at the end of the movie but it could have happened a lot sooner.

Overall

Shotgun Wedding is a very cute movie adding to Jennifer Lopez’s resume of wedding films. I like that this movie reaches a predictable conclusion but doesn’t take a predictable path to get there. It’s weird seeing Jennifer Lopez and The Utopian Josh Duhamel as ordinary people who aren’t skilled fighters. I thought for sure when she said she met her ex in Bali that it meant that she served in the army and knows some combat but that isn’t the case. It’s a fun movie that starts off great but lingers longer than needed. I’ll recommend this as something to watch in a stay-at-home date night scenario but that’s about the only circumstance. There is a cute, but corny, movie with plenty of plot conveniences that make for fun moments.