Everything goes wrong that could go wrong in the action-comedy Bride Hard, and I’m not talking about the on screen events that set its plot into motion. Devoid of anything approaching genuine laughs, mirth, suspense, or decent action, Bride Hard is a near perfect zero of a film; a failure on every level that should’ve been stopped before going into production and certainly before it’s foisted upon the public in barely releasable condition. There are few things more uncomfortable to sit through than an unfunny comedy, but a lacklustre, half-speed action film is up there (or down there, as it were) on the list of insufferable content. Put these two barrel scraping line items together, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
Sam (Rebel Wilson) is slated to be the Maid of Honour at the wedding of her childhood best friend, Betsy (Anna Camp). But when she flakes out and leaves Betsy and the other bridesmaids to fend for themselves during their bachelorette party in Paris (which is the least French Paris has ever looked on screen), Sam is demoted once it comes time for the big ceremony on a private island estate off the coast of Atlanta, Georgia. Although the bridal party assumes she won’t show, Sam does make it to the wedding and tries to roll with the verbal punches and shoddy hospitality she’s shown by Betsy’s soon-to-be sister-in-law (Anna Chlumsky) and the bride’s university roommates (Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Gigi Zumbardo). The tone of the occasion swings, however, when a band of heavily armed mercenaries – led by Stephen Dorff – take everyone hostage to get ahold of a load of riches stashed in the wealthy family fireplace. But what these thugs didn’t count on was the reason for Sam’s sometimes flighty behaviour and mysterious disappearances. Sam is actually a high level, physically capable special agent who can take out the team of killers all by herself.
Screenwriter Shaina Steinberg hasn’t come up with a bad idea for a female led action caper, and on paper the inclusion of veteran action filmmaker Simon West (Con Air, Expendables 2, The General’s Daughter) sounds like a great choice. But Bride Hard falls on its face out of the gate (with that strange Parisian bachelorette party and a related action sequence that introduces the viewer to Sam’s talents feeling like a reshoot or alternate scene) and never gets up. The budget for this thing looks like it hovers somewhere around rock bottom, with minimal sets, abysmal visual effects, and jarring edits that look like they are trying to paper over mistakes at every turn. West once had a sense of style and force, but Bride Hard has all the hallmarks of a film made by someone who has long stopped caring about the craft and simply shows up to take a paycheque and leave.
Aesthetically, Bride Hard looks like a pilot the CW would commission and then pass on once they saw the final results, even though they would take a financial hit because of the high amount of shoehorned product placement on display. Things aren’t helped by a lot of sanitizing of the action (and in some moments, language) in a bid to probably get this leaky dingy floating on a river of flop sweat a more family friendly rating. Everything from the unconvincing and shoddy pre-title sequence to the sad-sack chase sequence at the end that somehow makes the implementation of hovercrafts and Civil War era cannons boring feels like amateur hour. It’s made by a filmmaker with limited resources who can barely hide the contempt they have for their job. Either that, or they just don’t have it anymore.
Not that West has much help from Steinberg’s illogically plotted script, which has no clue how a film should move and operate. None of the characters in Bride Hard are three dimensional, and most of them are one dimensional in how little we know about them in relation to how much screen time they get. That makes it unconscionable that Bride Hard takes a full thirty minutes to get around to anything approaching a point or purpose. From there, the film spins its wheels, building itself around a ludicrously idiotic MacGuffin: a safe that requires multiple retinal scans and rings from a variety of people to open it, and the baddies have to wait thirty minutes between each sequence because… I don’t know. The movie just says so. It’s stupid. But during all this downtime there are plenty of chances to watch the cast members fail to improvise anything funny while being force to spew out relentlessly expository dialogue that sounds like they were forced to recite it word for word after it had been churned through Google Translate in several different languages, several different times. The plot is useable in Bride Hard. The script is not.
I guess that brings us to the cast, even though I don’t really want to get into it. There’s the old adage that if an actor gives a bad performance, it’s usually the fault of the writer or director, but in Bride Hard, almost everyone across the board shoulders some responsibility for its awfulness. Wilson seems less like a seasoned spy with an addiction to risk and more like a young child pew-pewing their way through a play-set and making things up as they go along. Wilson has attitude but no swagger. (It also doesn’t help that the use of a stunt double for the character’s physically demanding scenes is laughably obvious, generating the only really funny bits on offer.) Also, like everyone else here, her comedic timing and energy level are running at half speed.
Wilson has shockingly little chemistry with everyone around her, including her Pitch Perfect co-star Camp, who has the unfortunate task of simpering and whimpering through most of her scenes. Zumbado just has to play pregnant, a facet of her character I didn’t even clock until the halfway point of the movie. Chlumsky shows some energy as the passed over sister-in-law, but never has anything funny to say or do. Dorff’s villain is one note, bland, ineffective, and about as scary as a dust bunny. The only two people to make an impression here are the painfully overqualified Randolph – who looks visibly pissed off to be in this mess – and Michael O’Neill, who gives the closest thing Bride Hard has to a meaningful performance as the father of the bride.
The heroes are boring, the villains are worse, there’s no depth or craft, and it all goes on far longer than a film with nothing at all to say about anything should. Instead of asking “what more could you ask for” from Bride Hard, you would be better off asking “why didn’t you give us anything to begin with?” I’ve seen worse films than Bride Hard, but there have been few that have been more useless. It’s a slog to get through, with nothing endearing to hang onto. It’s not even the worst thing I’ve seen this year, but it’s the most painful.
Bride Hard opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, June 18, 2025.
