Bride Hard

Bride Hard swings for a Die Hard at a wedding, but often misses the mark.

The premise is gold: a former special forces operative, Sam, battling mercenaries at her best friend's nuptials. Yet, this promising setup frequently devolves into a comedic misfire, landing a lukewarm 5.5/10.

Rebel Wilson takes the lead, but the casting feels like a missed opportunity. While she commits, the role perhaps demanded a different blend of action grit and comedic subtlety. The film leans too heavily into broad slapstick, blunting the impact of its genuinely decent action sequences. Moments of cleverness are quickly drowned out by predictable gags, preventing the movie from ever truly soaring.

This felt like a concept with untapped potential. It's watchable, offering fleeting laughs and some competent fight choreography. However, its comedic approach is often clumsy, and the overall execution lacks the sharp precision needed to elevate it beyond a forgettable diversion.

A tighter script and a more refined comedic touch could have turned this into a memorable action-comedy; instead, it's merely a hard try.

I love Rebel Wilson and this film has such a stellar supporting cast, but the script is a stinker with so many plots holes and characters making choices that make no kind of sense... it becomes impossible to suspend disbelief and truly enjoy the film as an over the top action comedy.

You'll find yourself asking "Why would they DO that?" at every single choice everyone makes. That would work if the choices were campy or had some kind of comedic payoff, but they don't.

Why do the villains roll up on a wedding in a fleet of AIRBOATS - arguably the loudest water craft imaginable? Why does a woman shoot a blowdart bullet at another woman in the middle of a dance number, and why would a man who sees it happen find that an impressive and charming reason to hit on her? Because of reasons, I guess.

The whole film is just a contrivance of ideas taken from 100 others, and the mismash it leaves you with is a great background noise moment when you're vaccuming.

Horrible acting, and even a worse plot. I find her funny in a couple movies but she acts to much the same in all of them and overall its just not funny or entertaining. Turn back the dial a bit and dont be so over the top and it honestly might be a good movie. Maybe im wrong, but I think the ratings speak for themselves. She's good in the right roll, this isn't it. But honestly, im sure its a blast to film and act in. You get to be a agent and jump around and act dumb. He'll id enjoy it too. Add getting paid and its the perfect roll. Its just not great as a viewer. Sorry, not sorry.

Watch at AMC on 6-23-2025.

Sam (Rebel Wilson) and Betsy (Anna Camp) are childhood friends who've struggled to stay connected as their lives took different paths. Following Betsy's bachelorette night in Paris that Sam needed to disappear from in order to tackled a weapons deal as she works as a secret agent unbeknownst to her friends, Betsy says she's had enough of Sam's flaking and reassigns Maid-of-Honor to her future sister-in-law, Virginia (Anna Chlumsky). Despite now being on the outs with Betsy, Sam still attends the wedding to show support despite the friction still being there. However the ceremony is interrupted by the arrival of a teal of mercenaries led by Kurt (Stephen Dorff) who is working with the Best Man, Chris (Justin Hartley) to utilize the rings and occular scans of several guests who are required to access a safe on the property. With the wedding party taken hostage, Sam must now use her agency honed training to save her friends and stop the terrorists.

Bride Hard is the latest release of upstart distribution company Magenta Light Studios, the company from prolific producer Bob Yari seeks to specialize in low-mid budget films for theatrical distribution which have struggled in the wake of streaming proliferation that has seen theatrical films lean towards larger more expensive tentpoles. Written by Shaina Steinberg in her feature writing debut, who's most notable credits are as a writing assistant on the Starz series Spartacus and writing for the short lived NBC procedural Chase, Bride Hard is the kind of high concept package (being Bridesmaids by way of Die Hard) that you would've seen more of about 10 years ago with films that came about in the wake of Bridesmaids (think The Heat or Spy). With a cast that includes 3 alums from the Pitch Perfect franchise, Bride Hard feels very much like a man out of time in terms of what it is, it's just a shame it's not reminiscent of one of the good movies of this type and falls more in line with Barely Lethal and So Undercover.

On paper, there's no reason a movie like this shouldn't work because when you intertwine the high stress scenario of an incoming wedding with the high tension scenario of a action movie plot you can get some good mileage out of something like that (the underrated Belgian film The Wedding Party I felt did this kind of premise really well). Unfortunately with Bride Hard, it feels very much like a first draft as the movie doesn't really create characters so much as it creates vaguely defined archetypes that it places in weatherworn situations without particularly good timing or comedic energy. From the opening montage that clunkily sets up Sam and Betsy's estrangement that segues to a bachelorette party where the core cast need text identifiers because the movie couldn't figure out a way to establish their roles and characters organically, the establishment of both the bridal drama/shenanigans and the stock espionage elements aren't particularly well-integrated and the movie fails at creating the comic friction you need for this premise to work. The friendship between Sam and Betsy is supposed to be a key point for the audience to latch onto but there's so little actual meat to that relationship that when Sam is dumped as Maid-of-Honor in favor of Betsy's spiteful future sister-in-law Virginia, there's a feeling of "so what?" because we aren't really invested in the relationship.

Once the high concept action elements enter the movie at the half-hour mark things don't become too much better as despite Simon West's reputation as an action director, the action feels very cheap and without much in the way of memorable setpieces with maybe only an occasional line read mining a smirk or slight chuckle from a wasteland of comedic potential. The editing often feels very clumsy with a lot of choppy attempts at integrating the action elements with the comedic elements and even during standalone sequences, such as where Virginia is being Catty to Sam, there's an odd disjointedness that makes this film feel like it shouldn't be in a theater and would be more at home on VOD.

Bride Hard isn't the worst movie of this type that I've seen (for my money something like 2010's Killers was way worse), but it's also something of a reminder of how a lot of the good will from Bridesmaids was run into the ground by shameless copycats that assumed all you needed for success was a cast of talented female stars, a high concept hook, and no actual effort. There was probably a decent enough idea here at one point, but it either wasn't fully developed or died the death of a thousand cuts leading to something that's destined to take up the back rows of streaming services.

A Movie who's Producers told 15 mins into filming had to shift from an R, to a PG, for some reason.... At the start Rebel's all head shots, then she just punches people for 90 mins.

1. It is rated R, but they censored "pu**y" eight times.

2. Barely any one dies, after like the first 4, why?

3. We don't care about the bad guys attempted character development at the very end.

4. Her blood+scratches are so inconstant 5. She never uses any guns, because why?

6. Gold bars weigh 30 lbs!

7. The magical suction tube powered by swamp boat Fan?

8. Shooting a cannon BACKWARDS by corking the end (What is this Bugs Bunny?) 9. Her agency is the "5 eyes"???

10. Knock off Awkwafina Impression 11. Discount David Schimmer 12. None of their dressed get torn or dirty!

13. Chris did all this because he wanted to prove his fathers innocence, but.... " did it" 14. Chris approaches 15 guys with guns, firing up into the air and lives 15. Bad guys don't collect the 4 rings immediately because???

16. Accidentally blowing up the house.

As Rebel says "This AB-solutely sucks!"