Shotgun Wedding is a romcom about a tropical island destination wedding that gets held up by pirates.
Jennifer Lopez(the bride) is great, JLo is a star plan and simple, charisma for days. Here she gets to go a bit big, leans into the comedy in a way she doesn't usually get to in her romcoms, and its really fun. The performance is sometimes silly and that's not something JLo usually allows herself to be. Josh Duhamel(the groom) doesn't fair as well, the first third of the movie he really struggles to find his footing with his own performance and with his chemistry with JLo. It's a bit of bizarre casting but he came onto the project late(replacing Armie Hammer) and does find his footing as the movie gains momentum. But JLo deserves an A-list co-star and it is clear the movie suffers, and JLo is forced do more of the heavy lifting as a result, what would the movie be if it was Seth Rogan or Timothy Olyphant or just another actor with a bit more wattage. The supporting cast is stacked- Jennifer Coolidge, Cheech Marin, D'Arcy Carden, Callie Hernandez- but almost universally don't have enough to do, the one who does, bafflingly is Lenny Kravitz the only not-really professional actor in the bunch. They're all fun but it just seems like a wasted opportunity to not give them more.
Visually vivid with nice location shooting and minimal green screen work but with the standard nondescript romcom camera movement/editing. It's a fun premise(romcom come action flick), takes too long to get moving, but once it does it's an entertaining ride. There's also some thematic incongruities, both the leads are in their 50's but some of the "relationship issues" that are shoehorned in smack more of 30-somethings, not a huge deal but odd and maybe ultimately unnecessary given the main conflict is the pirates(who are all really weird and funny especially the leader).
Diverting fun but clearly could have been something better.
Currently streaming on Amazon.
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