Bride Hard, 2025.
Directed by Simon West.
Starring Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Anna Chlumsky, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Sherry Cola, Gigi Zumbado, Sam Huntington, Michael O’Neill, Colleen Camp, Stephen Dorff, Justin Hartley, Mark Valley, Jeff Chase, David Lengel, Craig Anton, Dhruv Uday Singh, Johnno Wilson, Kristian Kordula, Zachary Vazquez, Brannon Cross, Rey Hernandez, Alison Haselden, Makena Taylor, Caroline Raynaud, Remy Ortiz, William West, Langley Cornwell and Cristofher Griffin.
SYNOPSIS:
When a mercenary group takes a lavish wedding hostage, they have no idea what they are in for as the Maid of Honor is actually a secret agent ready to rain hell-fire upon anyone who would ruin her best friend’s wedding.
Rather than classifying director Simon West’s Bride Hard as a tone deaf action-comedy, this is a good time to coin a new label: the Rebel Wilson sub-genre. One knows exactly what kind of obliviously self-centered character and grating quippy material they are getting into. It’s also plausible to believe that she is repeating jokes from previous roles, such as here when she winks after each time saying she won’t do something. It’s a generic joke for sure, but it also may as well be one patented by Rebel Wilson. This is all one way of saying that even if the actor has noticeably slimmed down over the years (and good for her), her brand of comedy and delivery is still obnoxious.
Part of that considerable weight loss might have played into Rebel Wilson taking a full-on action-comedy lead role (which is not to say that she couldn’t have before or has never dabbled in humor along those lines), which, again, all there is to say is “good for her”. That’s about all I can muster when watching anything with Rebel Wilson, considering one knows what they’re getting, there are no surprises, and the humor is indisputably dreadful.
Even the title “Bride Hard” is cringeworthy. For one, its premise of a wedding overrun by terrorists with guests held hostage isn’t necessarily novel (I vaguely remember something similarly terrible starring Jennifer Lopez a couple of years ago that went straight to streaming), nor does it evoke Die Hard beyond the fact that there are hostages. There is also the question of why Simon West (working with screenwriter Shaina Steinberg, who conceives the story alongside Cece Pleasants) feels the need to draw attention to that masterful thriller in the title here. It plays like another bad joke and makes one wish they were watching that movie instead. If you are drawing inspiration from something, don’t make it this desperate and transparent.
Nevertheless, Bride Hard is a vehicle for Rebel Wilson to do what she always does, this time as secret agent Sam with a high success rate in the field, whose personal life is a disaster. She’s the maid of honor to her childhood friend Betsy (Anna Camp), who has noticed distance in their friendship following adulthood. Given that Sam consistently disappears from get-togethers, such as the bachelorette party, and seemingly hasn’t been a significant part of Betsy’s life, while also coming across as self-centered, it’s already a bad look for someone who will inevitably turn out to be a hero we are supposed to root for. It’s also startling that Betsy still wants her to be her maid of honor.
Following another successful mission during that bachelorette party, everyone travels to the estate of Betsy’s wealthy future in-laws for the official wedding festivities. As for Sam, she has to be told directly by her psychiatric evaluator (Sherry Cola) to take a vacation and do this for her supposed best friend. Admittedly, much of this is played for laughs, but that doesn’t mean it’s funny. Meanwhile, the bridesmaids are played by various actresses, including the extraordinarily talented Oscar-winning Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who is far too overqualified to be here, at one point singing certain dirty song lyrics to soothe the baby inside the belly of another bridesmaid during a hostage situation.
Then there is the groom, Ryan (Sam Huntington), an easily amused dope alongside his best man, Chris (Justin Hartley), whose father was imprisoned for shady business dealings when he was a child. The situation brought Chris closer to Sam’s family, practically making them brothers. However, Chris is holding a grudge and blames Sam’s family for not ensuring his father got off clean. He has also employed a mercenary team led by Stephen Dorff’s Kurt to crash the wedding, hold everyone hostage, and break into a vault that potentially contains a hard drive proving Chris’ father’s innocence. There is also an absurd amount of gold in the vault to help Kurt and his team.
This is as formulaic as it gets: Kurt and company storm the place when Sam conveniently isn’t around, who catches wind of what’s happening and springs into secret agent mode to save the day. However, despite the occasional amusing moment from Chris (taking way too much joy in being handed a gun without having the slightest clue of what he is doing, giving up all relevant information to Sam while thinking he has the upper hand and falling for her pretend-dumb routine) or inspired wedding object kill, this isn’t fun. While the film also has one or two violent kills, it is also completely cartoonish with characters making lame jokes in the heat of the action or Sam using a rocket launcher on a lone henchman outside.
Rebel Wilson deserves some credit for the fight scenes, which are intentionally messy and scrappy, with choreography that reflects this, although it’s unclear how much of it’s actually her. Also, Stephen Dorff is always reliable as a merciless villain. Aside from that, Bride Hard is hard to watch, mainly coming across as another failed experiment of Rebel Wilson tweaking her irritating comedic style into another sub-genre.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
