Movie Review: Rebel Wilson's 'Bride Hard' is a wedding movie that's easy to break up with
Take your average wedding flick, shotgun a hostage situation into it and add some anarchic energy from Rebel Wilson and you get 'Bride Hard,' which is a movie, for better or for worse. In this case, much, much worse.
'Bride Hard' — which combines thrusting male strippers dressed as Vikings as well as deadly automatic weapon fire — isn't funny or thrilling. It has the kind of lazy pacing you'd usually find on the Hallmark Channel and a level of acting not much better than porn.
Director Simon West, whose action movie credits include 'Con Air' and 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,' seems to be making a parody until he's not. The whole thing stinks of an '80s low-budget movie that you might find, back in the day, rummaging through a discount bin at Blockbuster.
Wilson stars as Sam, a secret government 'Mission Impossible'-type agent who is a loose cannon, lethal with an elbow and as creative as MacGyver, but poor at managing her personal life.
'I will give you all of your flowers on the job, but in your real life, you're kind of dumb,' says her agent friend, played by Sherry Cola, who like everyone here, has been shorn of saying anything amusing. Even the blooper reel at the end of the movie is underwhelming.
We start when Sam is reunited with her childhood best friend, bride-to-be Betsy — Wilson's 'Pitch Perfect' co-star Anna Camp — for a bachelorette party in Paris, which goes disastrously bad since Sam is also hunting for a bioweapon at the time.
The action then shifts to a mansion on a private island in Savannah, Georgia, the site of a lavish wedding and lots of daytime drinking. That is, until heavily armed goons arrive to steal a pallet of gold bars. (Gold bars, like it's a Looney Tunes cartoon.) It's up to Sam to save the day and prove she's a good friend.
Screenwriters Cece Pleasants and Shaina Steinberg seem to be mocking spy thrillers and wedding movies alike until they also kind of stop. There's lots of real blood, fiery explosions, impalings and electrocutions, along with irritable bowel syndrome jokes and plenty of kicks to the groin.
Sample dialogue: 'Oh, Sam, you're alone,' the mother of the bride says as she approaches Sam. 'Well, no. I have my emotional support boobs,' Sam responds. There's also needless scene-explaining, like one bad guy yelling, 'She's using the chocolate fountains as cover!' Yeah, we see that.
Have the screenwriters been reading the room? Not clear. 'If anybody ever mentions that I'm a secret agent, we will rendition you to one of our many unnamed bases,' warns Sam, as her spy colleague does a throat-slitting gesture. Rendition jokes are really so funny this summer.
To be fair, there are some intriguing wedding-themed assaults, like the use of hairspray in the eyes, curling iron burns and a bad guy's chest punctured on an hors d'oeuvres platter. Sam likes to wield champagne bottles as clubs.
One of the most cringe moments is when a stressed-out pregnant bridesmaid requests another sing the nasty, freaky 'My Neck, My Back (Lick It)' to her unborn baby, which triggers a sing-a-long with all the captives, mostly white, rich and middle aged. But even here it's neutered: The moviemakers go with the radio edit.
The movie co-stars Stephen Dorff as the main bad guy, Justin Hartley as eye candy with a secret, Anna Chlumsky as a high-strung maid of honor and Da'Vine Joy Randolph as an edgy, sassy bridesmaid. They all need to break up with their agents. (So does whoever did the stunts — the body doubles are embarrassing.)
'Bride Hard' hits an insane low in a battle sequence in which the bridesmaids — all in fluffy red gowns — use Revolutionary-era cannons to take on trained mercenaries in tactical gear with rocket-propelled grenades. That, of course, leads to plenty of jokes about 'ramming it in.'
If you do decide to pony up real cash to see this historic misfire in the movie theaters instead of waiting until you can hate-watch it for free on a streaming service, we have a word of advice: Bring your emotional support boobs.
'Bride Hard,' a Magenta Light Studios release in theaters Friday, is rated R for 'sexual references and some violence.' Running time: 105 minutes. Zero stars out of four.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
‘Jaws': The Prototype Summer Blockbuster Turns 50, Losing None of Its Bite
One of my formative movie memories is of being in a theater in 1975, packed with excited kids and teenagers in Newcastle, Australia, to see Jaws for the first time. It's not surprising that an audience in a city with miles of golden beaches might be especially primed to react to Steven Spielberg's ageless shark shocker. Even so, the screams were deafening, the nervous laughter that followed each jolt of terror was contagious and the physical sensation of entire rows of seats shaking as people reflexively lifted their feet up off the floor — and 'out of the water' — during each attack was unforgettable. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Jurassic World Rebirth' Tracking to Set Off Major Box Office Fireworks With $100M-$125M Opening Scarlett Johansson Details Depths of Her 'Jurassic Park' Fandom, From Pitching Herself to Steven Spielberg to Organizing Screening for Avengers Cast 'Music by John Williams' Doc Director on How Spielberg Convinced the Legendary Composer to Do the Film This was long before massive Imax screens, earth-rumbling sound systems and haptic motion seating made the visceral moviegoing experience a regular thing. It felt like the modern-day equivalent of French audiences ducking or even fleeing the theater as cinema pioneers the Lumière brothers sent a train hurtling toward them in 1896, urban legend or not. Spielberg's first major hit single-handedly changed the business model for Hollywood, giving birth to the blockbuster summer event movie. I've been a sucker for shark thrillers ever since, and even after way too many viewings to count, Jaws still scares the hell out of me. It spawned a feeding frenzy of imitators that continues to this day, aiming to tap into our primal fear of the monster from the deep. Some are effectively lean and mean, like the narratively spare Open Water in 2003, or The Shallows from 2016, which is basically Blake Lively in a bikini being circled on a rock by a great white for 90 minutes. But nothing has ever come close to the tension that floods our veins at the sound of that immortal two-note ostinato, the signature of John Williams' suspenseful score. Or the dolly zoom on the face of Roy Scheider's aquaphobic Amity Island police chief Martin Brody as he watches from the beach while a kid on an inflatable raft turns into a fountain of blood. Or Brody scooping chum from a bucket off the back of the Orca — the boat owned by Robert Shaw's maverick shark hunter Quint — when their target rears up out of the Atlantic, razor teeth bared. Spielberg's mastery, even at that early stage of his career, was in full bloom. Possibly the best thing that happened to him on that troubled shoot — with its soaring budget and stretched schedule — was the constant malfunctioning of the mechanical prop sharks. That forced the director to get crafty, almost inadvertently generating one of the all-time great screen examples of the power of the unseen monster to frighten the wits out of us. Prop issues also led to Spielberg making more extensive use of footage shot by pioneering Australian underwater cinematographers Ron and Valerie Taylor, notably in a standout scene in which a shark attacks and destroys a dive cage. That sequence featuring a real great white in action prompted a rewrite that saved the life of Matt Hooper, the wise-ass oceanographer played by Richard Dreyfuss. (He was shark food in the novel and the original shooting script.) Jaws was shot on Martha's Vineyard, just a hop, skip and jump up Cape Cod from where I spend time every summer in beautiful Provincetown. Even before reports of shark attacks in the area in recent years or the addition of warning signs on the main beaches, I always had a Chief Brody moment whenever I put a toe in the water. But it's never stopped me going in. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Wes Anderson's Movies Ranked From Worst to Best 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT
Geek Vibes Nation
8 hours ago
- Geek Vibes Nation
Celebrating 50 Years of 'Jaws': A Cinematic Milestone That Redefined Fear
On June 20, 1975, a mechanical shark named Bruce and a haunting two-note score unleashed terror on audiences worldwide, forever changing cinema. Jaws, directed by a then-28-year-old Steven Spielberg, celebrates its 50th anniversary , marking half a century as a cultural juggernaut and the blueprint for the modern blockbuster. This article honors the film's monumental accolades, its transformative impact on the thriller and horror genres, and its enduring influence on filmmakers and audiences alike. Jaws was a critical and commercial titan upon release, earning over $470 million worldwide against a $9 million budget, making it the highest-grossing film of its time until Star Wars surpassed it in 1977. Its critical acclaim matched its box-office dominance, securing three Academy Awards in 1976: Best Film Editing (Verna Fields), Best Original Score (John Williams), and Best Sound. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, a rare feat for a genre film, though it lost to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Beyond the Oscars, Jaws earned a Golden Globe for John Williams' iconic score and was later inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2001 for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance. The American Film Institute ranked it 56th on its '100 Years…100 Movies' list and second on its '100 Thrills' list, cementing its status as a cinematic touchstone. These accolades reflect not just the film's technical brilliance but its ability to resonate across generations. Redefining the Blockbuster and the Thriller Genre Jaws is widely credited with inventing the summer blockbuster. Before its release, summer was a slow season for theaters, but Universal's aggressive marketing—national TV ads, a wide release on 409 screens, and tie-in merchandise—set a new standard for Hollywood. The film's success proved that high-concept, mass-appeal movies could dominate the box office, paving the way for franchises like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Within the thriller and horror genres, Jaws redefined how suspense was crafted. Spielberg's decision to show the shark sparingly, due to mechanical failures during production, heightened tension and forced audiences to rely on their imaginations—a technique now synonymous with effective horror. John Williams' minimalist, pulse-pounding score became a character in itself, its duh-dun motif evoking primal dread. This less-is-more approach influenced countless filmmakers, from Ridley Scott in Alien (1979), which used sparse visuals to build terror, to John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), where a simple piano riff amplified suspense. The film's character-driven storytelling also set it apart. The trio of Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), oceanographer Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) grounded the horror in human conflict and camaraderie. Their dynamic inspired ensemble-driven thrillers like The Thing (1982) and Predator (1987), where interpersonal tension amplifies external threats. Influence on the Creature Feature and Beyond Jaws birthed the modern creature feature, spawning a wave of 'nature strikes back' films. The late 1970s and 1980s saw a flood of imitators, from Orca (1977) and Piranha (1978) to Alligator (1980), each attempting to replicate Jaws' formula of a predatory beast terrorizing humans. While few matched its artistry, these films cemented the subgenre's popularity. Even today, low-budget shark thrillers like The Shallows (2016) and 47 Meters Down (2017) owe their existence to Jaws, as does the tongue-in-cheek absurdity of Sharknado (2013). Beyond creature features, Jaws influenced aquatic horror and survival thrillers. Films like Open Water (2003) and The Reef (2010) echo its primal fear of the ocean, while Crawl (2019) channels its blend of natural disaster and predatory menace. Spielberg himself revisited the template with Jurassic Park (1993), swapping sharks for dinosaurs but retaining the awe, terror, and human drama that made Jaws timeless. The film's impact extends to technical filmmaking. Spielberg's use of point-of-view shots, particularly the shark's underwater perspective, became a staple of horror, seen in everything from Friday the 13th (1980) to The Blair Witch Project (1999). His innovative use of the dolly zoom to convey Brody's shock on the beach inspired directors like Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright to experiment with visual storytelling. A Lasting Legacy Fifty years later, Jaws remains a masterclass in suspense, storytelling, and innovation. Its influence is evident not just in cinema but in pop culture—theme park rides, memes, and even shark conservation efforts spurred by the film's demonization of great whites. While it inspired countless imitators, few have matched its balance of terror and humanity. As we celebrate this milestone, Jaws reminds us why we fear the ocean and why we keep diving back in. It's more than a movie; it's a primal scream, a technical triumph, and a testament to Spielberg's genius. Here's to 50 years of keeping us out of the water—and glued to our screens. Note: All box-office figures and award details are sourced from historical records and industry databases like Box Office Mojo and the Academy Awards archives.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Jaws' at 50: Jeffrey ‘Deputy Hendricks' Kramer recalls ‘horrific' first scene and an epic Roy Scheider flub
Move over Helen of Troy. Fifty years ago, Jeffrey Kramer became the face that launched a trio of shark hunters on that famously not-big-enough boat, the Orca. Released on June 20, 1975, Steven Spielberg's Jaws holds bragging rights as Hollywood's first contemporary summer blockbuster, generating massive box-office returns and waves of movie-based merchandise. And Kramer can boast to being the first actor in the four film Jaws-verse to react to the gruesome remains of a shark attack victim. More from GoldDerby Ryan Murphy and the JFK Jr.-Carolyn Bessette controversy, explained: Why 'American Love Story' Instagram post got so much hate Everything to know about 'The Pitt' Season 2 'The Daily Show' leads Best Talk Series Emmy odds amid outrage over the low number of available slots As Amity Island's Deputy Leonard "Jeff" Hendricks (more on those two names later), the actor is first on the scene the morning after the titular great white sinks its jaws into its first piece of human prey, a nude night swimmer named Chrissie. While Hendricks' boss — water-avoidant police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) — approaches, Kramer's horrified face dominates the foreground, his hand at his mouth in shock and his eyes wide with terror. That expression single-handedly establishes the stakes of the movie — and telegraphs the thrills and jump scares to come. "Hendricks is the audiences' eyes and ears," Kramer, now 79, confirms to Gold Derby. "He reacts with the same revulsion viewers had in the theater. And none of us have swam in the ocean the same way since!" Kramer credits Spielberg and the Jaws crew with giving him something revolting to react to in that moment. A bloody severed arm — of the artificial variety, mind you—was buried in the sand as real crabs clambered all over it. "It was pretty horrific," recalls Kramer, who grew up visiting the beaches that wrap around Martha's Vineyard, the Massachusetts island retreat where the problem-plagued production was filmed over the course of five very long months. Of course, Kramer had another good reason for feeling queasy. His crucial reaction shot was filmed on the very first day of his very first major studio production. "There were a lot of firsts happening," he says with a hearty laugh. "I was so nervous, I probably could have thrown up for real!" Derek Storm/Everett Collection Kramer's all-too-human response is one of the many grounded grace notes that makes Jaws an endlessly rewatchable character study in addition to being an eminently re-playable thrill machine. Five decades on, Kramer — who still wears his Amity Police cap every day, including during this interview — says that his association with Jaws reaps more valuable rewards than the $10,000 fee that Quint (Robert Shaw) received for piloting the Orca out to open water with Brody and Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) in tow. "I got stopped by a cop in Sherman Oaks once for running a stop sign," he recalls. "I apologized, and he said, 'Why are you wearing that hat?' I told him, 'Oh, I played the deputy in Jaws.' He let me go and said: 'I love that movie — don't run that stop sign again.'" To celebrate the golden anniversary of Spielberg's classic shark tale, Kramer shared five stories from the sets of Jaws and its 1978 sequel, Jaws 2. Consider this your essential summer beach reading. Talk about your temperamental movie stars. Due respect to the trio of Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfuss, but Jaws' main attraction was a mechanical shark named Bruce — and he famously didn't like performing on command. Bruce's various breakdowns and no-shows have long since become the stuff of Hollywood legend, and Kramer can attest to their veracity. Universal Pictures/Everett Collection "The first time I ever saw the shark, it was supposed to surface, but instead it just sank," he remembers. "Sometimes they'd be rolling three cameras, and there wouldn't be a foot of film that they could use." The upshot of Bruce's unreliability is that Kramer ended up with more screen time. "They needed to keep shooting something,' he laughs. 'So, my part blessedly got a little bigger." Meanwhile, watching Spielberg roll with the shark's various punches gave him an early crash course in set management — a lesson Kramer took with him later in life when he moved behind the camera as a producer on such shows as The Practice and Chicago Hope. "I always found him to be a kind, decent and talented man," Kramer says of the two-time Oscar winner. "There was so much on his shoulders, but he knew what he wanted, and he let you get there — but also helped you along the way." As an example of how Spielberg would allow the actors find their own way through a scene, Kramer points to a moment early on in Jaws where Brody and Hendricks are busying themselves as a battalion of fisherman descend on Amity in the hopes of being shark slayers. While Hendricks stands on the dock observing the action, Brody is inside a shack speaking hurriedly into the phone. As he hangs up, he throws a handful of debris at the window to catch his deputy's attention and motions for him to come inside. Universal Pictures/Everett Collection Kramer says that bit of business was improvised by Schieder on the day of filming. "It was a better entry into the scene than just having me walk through the door," he explains. "It also adds to the characters a little bit. Hendricks is such a happy guy, and he loves the island, so he's a little suspicious of all the outsiders showing up." Some of those outsiders do eventually catch a shark — though it's not the one that's responsible for all the mayhem. A tiger shark is hoisted on the dock as Amity's tourist-minded mayor, Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), prematurely declares the crisis over. Kramer says that the body of a real tiger shark was used for that scene, flown in directly from Florida, due to the absence of that particular species from Massachusetts waters. "They flew it up in a box filled with ice and every night after shooting they'd put it back in the box," he says now. "After three days, it smelled so bad! But we still had to smile and pretend that it didn't." Speaking of funky smells, Kramer recalls a particularly fragrant night out with Hamilton during the production of Jaws 2. As with the first film, the sequel wound up being a much longer shoot than anticipated… like nine months longer. Universal Pictures/Everett Collection Fortunately, Kramer and Hamilton had become fast friends during their first extended go-around on the Vineyard and knew how to put all that extra time on the island to good use — namely, lots of late nights at local watering holes. After one of those last-call lost evenings, the duo made their way back to their hotel when Hamilton decided to stop and pet a stray cat that had crossed their path. There was just one problem — that nighttime critter wasn't a cat. "It was a skunk!" Kramer exclaims, cringing at the sense memory. "Murray got full-on skunked! When we got to the hotel, he refused to go to his room and ended up sleeping on the couch in the lobby. By the next morning, that place was almost uninhabitable." Despite the olfactory offense, Kramer has nothing but fond memories of Hamilton, who passed away in 1986. "We shared a dressing room, and Murray used to keep a bottle of gin in my boot,' he says wistfully. 'Those movies took so long to shoot that you tended to make lifelong friends." You're not crazy: Deputy Hendricks really does go by Leonard or "Lenny" in the first Jaws. But in a key scene in Jaws 2, Brody calls him Jeff — a Scheider flub that ended up in the finished film. Universal Pictures/Everett Collection It's not unlike the infamous moment in Star Wars: A New Hope when a post-trench run Luke Skywalker triumphantly climbs out of his X-Wing and bellows, "Carrie!" — as in Carrie Fisher — instead of "Leia." (For the record, Mark Hamill has strenuously declared himself innoncent in the name-blame game.) "Roy called me Jeff in the scene and how it ended up staying in there, I'll never know," Kramer sighs. "It's such an oversight; I never imagined that they'd leave it in." The blatant flub might be indictive of Scheider's general disinterest in being part of Jaws 2. Kramer says that the actor was contractually obligated to headline the sequel, for which neither Spielberg nor Dreyfuss returned. Scheider fulfilled his contract, but his mind was clearly on other things — like soaking in the beach rays. "Roy got so tan in the movie, he had to be color-corrected in the final mix," Kramer says, chuckling. "He loved the sun — he sat out there all the time with a reflector and a G-string." (Scheider died in 2008 at age 75.) For a hot minute, it looked like Scheider was going to lose a deputy going into Jaws 2 as well. Kramer recalls that he turned down the movie after original director, John D. Hancock, created a partner for Hendricks who got all of the best lines. "But then Hancock got fired, and they brought in Jeannot Szwarc," Kramer explains. "Jeannot said, 'What happened to the deputy who was in the first movie? I liked him.' They brought me back and I was so grateful." During the course of Jaws 2, Hendricks becomes Amity's police chief after Brody is stripped of that title courtesy of his shark obsession. And even though the ex-chief ultimately saves the island again, Kramer believes that Brody let his deputy keep the badge. "I think Brody said, 'Get me off of this island!'" laughs Kramer. "'If I'm going to live here, I'm just going to go to the beach — I don't want to deal with sharks anymore.'" Universal Pictures/Everett Collection It's worth noting that 1987's Jaws: The Revenge revealed that Brody died of a heart attack in between movies. Kramer says he wasn't asked back for that notoriously awful fourth and final installment and wouldn't have wanted to return anyway. "Even I knew when to stop," he jokes. But that doesn't mean he's stopped thinking about his alter ego. Kramer says that he believes Hendricks remains a devoted Amity islander to this day, starting a family and maybe even taking his own adult kid on as the department's newest deputy. (In 2018, Hendricks starred in his own independent comic book that took the character in a more fantastical direction.) Not for nothing, but a Chief Hendricks cameo would be ideal fodder for an all-new Jaws sequel or reboot, although Kramer doesn't expect either to happen anytime soon. "Jaws will never get remade," he vows. "Nowadays they just want these kinds of movies to be bigger and it takes you out of any essence of reality." "Steven captured the fear of the primordial and the depths of the unknown, and inspired a generation of filmmakers," Kramer continues. "As time goes by, you appreciate Jaws more and more." Best of GoldDerby Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') 'It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from 'Gerald's Game' to 'Hill House' to 'Life of Chuck' Click here to read the full article.
