★½
“Die Hard at… a wedding?”
Director West certainly knows his way around an action film. He is probably best known for Con Air, but I’m also a fan of his Chinese disaster porn flick, Skyfire, about a volcano-themed holiday resort (guess how that works out?). So, despite the critical drubbing this received, I was hoping this might still be entertaining. Unfortunately, it is not. It’s a comedy-action movie, that manages to fire blanks from both barrels. There is not a shred of originality to be found here. What isn’t stolen here from Die Hard, is ripped off from Bridesmaids – heroine Wilson plays her role like the makers ordered Melissa McCarthy on Temu. Writer Shaina Steinberg should be ashamed for the lazy sloppiness, painfully apparent here.
Sam (Wilson) is a secret agent, a fact which repeatedly interferes in attempts to reconnect with childhood friend Betsy (Camp), who is just about to get married. For instance, Sam has to abandon the bachelorette party, in order to recover a bio-weapon. On the day of the wedding itself, Sam is fortuitously away from the wedding party when a group of thieves, led by Dorff, attack the event, take everyone hostage and begin cracking the multiple locks on the family safe. But they are not just ordinary thieves, and Sam is the only hope to neutralize them. Sound just slightly familiar? That noise you hear is Steven de Souza preparing his demand for a screenwriting credit.
On the other hand, having seen the end product, I would sue to get my name taken off this heap of nonsense. I kept going back and forth as to which element was less effective: the comedy or the action. In the end, I would have to say the former, because I don’t think I cracked a single smile over the entire hour and three quarters. The characters are of the sort intended to be “larger than life”, but in this case, it means gratingly annoying. Sam wasn’t the worst to be fair. There are others here, whose company I would gnaw my own leg off to escape from, if I ever met them in the real world. Again, I put the blame for these failures, squarely on the shoulders of the script.
The action is not much better, with it being painfully obvious that Wilson needed to be doubled for any scene requiring speed, strength or flexibility. Basically, anything more than standing about – possibly stretching to swinging something like a fire-hose around for a few seconds. Why they couldn’t cast someone semi-plausible in the role escapes me. Spy did a far better job with the similarly plus-sized McCarthy. It all builds to… um, some kind of chase scene involving hovercrafts laden with gold bullion? To be honest, my attention was drifting elsewhere during the action climax, which is a savage indictment of its shortcomings. If the action heroine genre is struggling at the box-office, this kind of garbage is the reason why.
Dir: Simon West
Star: Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Stephen Dorff, Anna Chlumsky