Shotgun Wedding Trailer Should Have an Open Bar
Another streaming movie is on deck, and it doesn’t look good. Amazon has released a trailer for Shotgun Wedding, its upcoming action-comedy starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel. The pair play a couple whose lavish destination wedding is taken hostage by a terrorist group and must work through their cold feet as they fight the bad guys and attempt to rescue their bickering families. Sônia Braga, Cheech Marin, Jennifer Coolidge, and Lenny Kravitz also star. Shotgun Wedding is directed by Jason Moore (who also helmed Pitch Perfect) and is set to arrive on Amazon Prime on January 27, 2023. You can see the trailer below:
Ugh. There’s nothing worse than wasted potential. Shotgun Wedding has a great premise, and back when the people who made movies cared about them, they could’ve gotten a fun film out of it. It brings to mind something like Romancing the Stone, not so much in plot but in what should have been the tone: mismatched couple, dangerous situation, they fall in love – or, in this case, rediscover their love – while taking down some evil villains. But we live in the era where Hollywood has forgotten how to make almost anything beyond a $200 million blockbuster, so it’s corny, lazy, too silly to take even slightly seriously, and getting dumped onto a streaming service. Action-comedies are not what they once were; they used to be funny, but they took the action seriously. Think Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run (both directed by Martin Brest), Lethal Weapon, True Lies, 48 Hrs., Tango and Cash, and the like. They struck a great balance between the two genres. Now, they lean so heavily into comedy that they’re just farces that don’t function as action movies. (The growing exceptions are the films from 87North, like Nobody, Bullet Train, and Violent Night; all are very funny, but the action hits hard and doesn’t skimp on blood or tension.) Shotgun Wedding looks like it’ll be another example of this bastardized style.
It’s a shame, because Jennifer Lopez probably could have been great in a movie like this. She’s got charisma, and she can be fun, self-effacing, and sexy. But star power is mostly wasted nowadays, and I’ll bet none of her talents are utilized in Shotgun Wedding. Josh Duhamel, I’m not so sure about; I liked him fine on Las Vegas back in the day, but does he have the type of presence for a movie like this? His role was originally supposed to go to Ryan Reynolds and then to Armie Hammer before the producers settled for Duhamel. But imagine Lopez paired with Brad Pitt, or George Clooney, or even her real-life husband Ben Affleck (for example; not saying we need to recreate Gigli, just that someone who knows how to entertain a mass audience is preferred). Sure, this is going directly to streaming, but they should have gone for the gold anyway. Most of these movies suck because they’re treated like afterthoughts. Pretend you’re having a big Hollywood premiere before playing in every theater in America, and put some effort into it. Oh well; this will be one of those flicks you pass while looking through Prime’s offerings late at night and thinking, “Oh, yeah,” before skipping to something else you barely remember exists.
