Shotgun Wedding

                  Getting married is a big event in most people’s lives, so much so that they are planned for at great length. It is also a go-to event for filmmakers as weddings are a perfect place for highjinks as so many things can go wrong, but still end right. With the title Shotgun Wedding, Jennifer Lopez’s new romantic comedy, you know you are in for an explosive time, but unfortunately for us not a lot of laughs.

                  Tom ( Josh Duhamel) wants to have the perfect wedding when he marries Darcy (Jennifer Lopez), so he finds some beautiful island locale to make that happen. Located off the coast of the Philippines, the island seems perfect, even if it has a past where pirates have robbed it. In Tom’s mind, what are the odds of that happening again? So there they are, family in tow, as Tom is ready to make Darcy his wife. Although they seem right for each other, Tom and Darcy’s families couldn’t be more different. Darcy comes from money, her dad Robert (Cheech Marin) doesn’t seem like a fan of Tom and her mother Renata (Sonia Braga) doesn’t care for her ex’s new girlfriend. Meanwhile Tom’s mother Carol  (Jennifer Coolidge) couldn’t be happier and his father Larry is just in it for the ride and of course to record it. To add more intrigue, Robert invites Darcy’s ex, Sean ( Lenny Kravitz) , who seems to have everything working for him. Things though are about to get a little more difficult when uninvited guests in the form of (you guessed it) pirates show up. Things though don’t go as planned as Darcy and Tom avoid capture but will their luck run out, or will they be able to save everyone and their wedding before it does.

Written by Mark Hammer, Shotgun Wedding is aiming to be funny, but the laughs are few and far in between with this script. Lopez and Duhamel feel off, and it makes sense when you hear that Duhamel was the third actor to take the roll of Tom. There is little to no chemistry with Lopez, as they really do play like a forced wedding, as the title of the film suggests.

                  Not only does the script lack laughs, it is also completely predictable, as everything happens exactly how you think it will. Although the laughs are lacking, the action is not too bad. It is not all doom and gloom when it comes to Shotgun Wedding, as there is a bright spot, all which revolve around the always funny, Jennifer Coolidge.  but unlike Coolidge’s performance, the rest of the film doesn’t deliver a very watchable movie. It just simply doesn’t work on many levels, which is a disappointment, as it has some things working for it. Instead we are cordially invited to one of the worst weddings of not just this year, but of any year period.