Entertainment

Movie Review: Rebel Wilson’s ‘Bride Hard’ is a wedding movie that’s easy to break up with

June 17, 2025 2:12 pm

[Source: AP]

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.

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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.

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