Bride Hard

It's sad what passes as 'comedy' this days.

I've watched it so that YOU, dear reader, don't have to.

It's like Bridesmaids and Die Hard had a baby. But they were both on substance abuse during that time. Action doesn't work, comedy doesn't work, it's chaos in worst possible way.

Some, rare jokes work, but 90% of "humor" is embarrassingly bad, forced and without any chemistry whatsoever. Without spoiling anything, it feels like bad parody of a bad parody at times.

That takes me to chemistry; Rebel Wilson does try to put some heart into it, but again, term that goes through my mind since I watched it - FORCED.

So, does it pass to kill some time? Only if your bar is low and your popcorn's salty.

Re-watch some 90s or early 2000s comedy instead.

I am someone that is very easy to please when it comes to comedy. Give me an Adam Sandler comedy any day of the week, or a cheap made for DVD American Pie clone from the early 2000s, and i will have a fun time. Sadly this movie failed on so many levels...

So yes Rebel Wilson lost a lot of weight and her Pitch Perfect moniker of "Fat Amy" wouldn't really fit these days. That said, casting her in some kind of super spy role just didn't work. Not only her action scenes were done by an obvious stunt double, but i just couldn't take her seriously. If she had played someone who had to end up in a spy role trough some shenanigans and was always messing up yet being lucky trough comedy, then sure, but we meant to think she is an actual CIA agent...

Then the bad guys (lead by Stephen Dorff) decisions makes no sense, they never really appear threatening, and its like the movie can never decide if it want to be a spoof or take itself semi-seriously.

And the continuity errors... oh boy. Just to give you exemples without any spoilers, at one point characters are supose to be wet but dry out in 2 seconds. Another scene there is some kind of tube established who act like a vaccum, but there is something at the other end doing the vaccum part, yet later that thing is remove and the tube is still doing the vaccum part? These "goofs" are insanely obvious and really made me roll my eyes on how amateurish the direction was. Yet Simon West is directing this?

Among the supporting cast you got Anna Camp also from Pitch Perfect, who was probably the "best character" but thats not saying a lot. Da'Vine Joy Randolph plays a morbidly obese woman who for some reason is portrayed as someone who use her body to her advantage?? Even Justin Hartley, who seem to not have aged since Smallville and that i always liked, plays an unbelievable character that i just couldn't take seriously.

Honestly the movie just do not work. Its not a good action movie, its not a good comedy, it mixes the two rather poorly, and even the cast, wich is on paper pretty good, can't manage to bring much to try to save it.

If you want a good Die Hard clone done in the modern era, watch Violent Night. That one mix comedy and action extremely well.

I will go with a 4 out of 10 for Brides Hard. Below Average. I would had maybe consider a 5 if it was not for the (too many) continuity errors.

Sam (Rebel Wilson) and Betsy (Anna Camp) are childhood friends who've struggled to stay connected as their lives took different paths. Following Betsy's bachelorette night in Paris that Sam needed to disappear from in order to tackled a weapons deal as she works as a secret agent unbeknownst to her friends, Betsy says she's had enough of Sam's flaking and reassigns Maid-of-Honor to her future sister-in-law, Virginia (Anna Chlumsky). Despite now being on the outs with Betsy, Sam still attends the wedding to show support despite the friction still being there. However the ceremony is interrupted by the arrival of a teal of mercenaries led by Kurt (Stephen Dorff) who is working with the Best Man, Chris (Justin Hartley) to utilize the rings and occular scans of several guests who are required to access a safe on the property. With the wedding party taken hostage, Sam must now use her agency honed training to save her friends and stop the terrorists.

Bride Hard is the latest release of upstart distribution company Magenta Light Studios, the company from prolific producer Bob Yari seeks to specialize in low-mid budget films for theatrical distribution which have struggled in the wake of streaming proliferation that has seen theatrical films lean towards larger more expensive tentpoles. Written by Shaina Steinberg in her feature writing debut, who's most notable credits are as a writing assistant on the Starz series Spartacus and writing for the short lived NBC procedural Chase, Bride Hard is the kind of high concept package (being Bridesmaids by way of Die Hard) that you would've seen more of about 10 years ago with films that came about in the wake of Bridesmaids (think The Heat or Spy). With a cast that includes 3 alums from the Pitch Perfect franchise, Bride Hard feels very much like a man out of time in terms of what it is, it's just a shame it's not reminiscent of one of the good movies of this type and falls more in line with Barely Lethal and So Undercover.

On paper, there's no reason a movie like this shouldn't work because when you intertwine the high stress scenario of an incoming wedding with the high tension scenario of a action movie plot you can get some good mileage out of something like that (the underrated Belgian film The Wedding Party I felt did this kind of premise really well). Unfortunately with Bride Hard, it feels very much like a first draft as the movie doesn't really create characters so much as it creates vaguely defined archetypes that it places in weatherworn situations without particularly good timing or comedic energy. From the opening montage that clunkily sets up Sam and Betsy's estrangement that segues to a bachelorette party where the core cast need text identifiers because the movie couldn't figure out a way to establish their roles and characters organically, the establishment of both the bridal drama/shenanigans and the stock espionage elements aren't particularly well-integrated and the movie fails at creating the comic friction you need for this premise to work. The friendship between Sam and Betsy is supposed to be a key point for the audience to latch onto but there's so little actual meat to that relationship that when Sam is dumped as Maid-of-Honor in favor of Betsy's spiteful future sister-in-law Virginia, there's a feeling of "so what?" because we aren't really invested in the relationship.

Once the high concept action elements enter the movie at the half-hour mark things don't become too much better as despite Simon West's reputation as an action director, the action feels very cheap and without much in the way of memorable setpieces with maybe only an occasional line read mining a smirk or slight chuckle from a wasteland of comedic potential. The editing often feels very clumsy with a lot of choppy attempts at integrating the action elements with the comedic elements and even during standalone sequences, such as where Virginia is being Catty to Sam, there's an odd disjointedness that makes this film feel like it shouldn't be in a theater and would be more at home on VOD.

Bride Hard isn't the worst movie of this type that I've seen (for my money something like 2010's Killers was way worse), but it's also something of a reminder of how a lot of the good will from Bridesmaids was run into the ground by shameless copycats that assumed all you needed for success was a cast of talented female stars, a high concept hook, and no actual effort. There was probably a decent enough idea here at one point, but it either wasn't fully developed or died the death of a thousand cuts leading to something that's destined to take up the back rows of streaming services.

Bride Hard swings for a Die Hard at a wedding, but often misses the mark.

The premise is gold: a former special forces operative, Sam, battling mercenaries at her best friend's nuptials. Yet, this promising setup frequently devolves into a comedic misfire, landing a lukewarm 5.5/10.

Rebel Wilson takes the lead, but the casting feels like a missed opportunity. While she commits, the role perhaps demanded a different blend of action grit and comedic subtlety. The film leans too heavily into broad slapstick, blunting the impact of its genuinely decent action sequences. Moments of cleverness are quickly drowned out by predictable gags, preventing the movie from ever truly soaring.

This felt like a concept with untapped potential. It's watchable, offering fleeting laughs and some competent fight choreography. However, its comedic approach is often clumsy, and the overall execution lacks the sharp precision needed to elevate it beyond a forgettable diversion.

A tighter script and a more refined comedic touch could have turned this into a memorable action-comedy; instead, it's merely a hard try.

So when they said Bridehard and I saw Rebel Wilson on the poster, I was thinking Bridesmaids and pondering if Rebel had the guts to go the distance in comedy.

As it turns out Bridehard was a play on words for meaning Die Hard...At a wedding. Not a bad turnaround for a movie, but it was more funny than it was action-packed.

What sucks about that is that this movie was directed by Simon West. Back in the day, Simon West was a name that met action: Con Air, Tomb Raider, The Mechanic. To have the director's name on this, I wanted to see better than what I got when it comes to action. They could have gotten someone else to point and shoot the camera, and the movie would have been just as good, but having Simon West as a director means this movie could have been better, but it wasn't.

Best to see it for free on a streaming service.