Producers: Bob Yari, Joel David Moore, Colleen Camp, Cassian Elwes, Jason Ross Jallet, Max Osswald and Kevin Ulrich Director: Simon West Screenplay: Shaina Steinberg Cast: Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Stephen Dorff, Justin Hartley, Anna Chlumsky, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Sherry Cola, Gigi Zumbado, Sam Huntington, Michael O’Neill, Jeff Chase, Craig Anton, Colleen Camp and Kristian Kordula Distributor: Magenta Light Studios
Grade: D
It’s difficult to convey the sheer incompetence of “Bride Hard,” a purported action comedy in which the action is a mess and the comedy lame. Culpability for the latter must be assigned to scripter Shaina Steinberg, but responsibility for the former has to be laid at the feet of director Simon West. As those who remember “Con Air” will know, he’s an old hand at staging action set-pieces, but the skill he once demonstrated appears to have abandoned him. Rarely have such episodes looked so sloppy on screen; true, cinematographer Alan Caudillo and editors Andrew MacRitchie and Todd E. Miller must share the blame, as well as producers who stint on effects resources. But ultimately the buck stops with the director.
Nor is West helped by his star Rebel Wilson, who’s Sam, an operative for some shadowy US spy agency. She plays the part with an attitude daring you (as well as the other characters) not to appreciate how fitting her given name is, as if it were proof of her hilarious outrageousness. As a prologue set in Paris (which a caption helpfully informs us is in France) shows, Sam’s one of those prototypical rule-breaking types, who ignores an order not to go beyond simply observing two nefarious characters to seize the biological weapon one has passed to the other. As at all such moments, she has a limp quip at hand to irk those amazed or appalled by her audacity.
But the operation is but one purpose behind her visit to the City of Lights. She’s there for the bachelorette party of her childhood best friend Betsy (Anna Camp), for whom she’s serving as maid of honor. Unfortunately, her prolonged absence from the festivities gives jealous Virginia (Anna Chlumsky), Betsy’s soon-to-be-sister-in-law, the opportunity to persuade the bride-to-be that Sam’s too unreliable to be the maid of honor, and the other bridesmaids—Betsy’s college roommates, sex-crazed Lydia (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and pregnant Zoe (Gigi Zumbado)—agree. Even Betsy’s mother Diane (Colleen Camp), though she’s an old friend of Sam, acquiesces to the suggestion that Sam change places with the scheming Virginia.
Still, though hurt, Sam is persuaded to attend the wedding at the Georgia estate of groom-to-be Ryan’s (Sam Huntington) wealthy family as one of the three lesser bridesmaids. Her professional skills are called for, though, when a bunch of gun-toting terrorists led by a nasty piece of work named Kurt (Stephen Dorff) take over the estate. Their purpose: to steal the pile of gold bullion kept in a seemingly impregnable safe, the opening of which requires a lengthy, intricate routine involving precise timing and the rings of individual family members, including the heirloom intended for the bride’s finger in the safekeeping of hunky best man Chris (Justin Hartley).
What follows is a series of action episodes in which Sam acts like MacGyver in a bridal gown, using whatever comes to hand, whether it be knickknacks, hair care tools or parts of the machinery in the family distillery operation, to take on the interlopers. (One will not be surprised to learn that a ceremonial cannon introduced early on assumes the role of Chekhov’s gun in the closing confrontation.) Unfortunately, though Wilson (and her presumed stand-ins) are game, all the fight scenes are handled so ineptly that they amount to little more than poor mixtures of comedy and surprisingly nasty violence, staged in blurry, ragged visuals.
Meanwhile Betsy and the rest of the captured guests try to try to deter Kurt, whom the smirking Dorff plays like a preening egomaniac, from doing his worst. There are a few glimmers of humor here: Randolph plays a randy broad to the hilt, even coming on to the reverend (Kristian Kordula) called on to officiate at the ceremony, and Hartley earns a few chuckles as a handsome doofus who’s far from the slick operator he thinks he is. But most of the secondary cast look stranded as they dutifully intone the terrible lines the script requires them to say.
The Georgia setting is attractive enough, and Marek Dobrowolski’s production design and Salvador Perez’s costumes are fine. Ryan Shore’s score tries to rev up the alternately tired and frantic material on screen.
But it’s all wasted effort. Even the punny title of this laugh-free, chaotically staged misfire is bad. And unlike the movie it mimics, it will certainly have no sequels.