‘Shotgun Wedding’ Review: Jennifer Lopez Hits The Altar Again But This Time With Real Fireworks

19.01.2023 - 20:05 / deadline.com

Jennifer Lopez has been married a few times, both in life and in the movies, most recently twice last year with her real life wedding(s) to Ben Affleck, and on screen in her delightful Valentines Day-timed comedy, Marry Me. Both made me happy for her, but her latest, Shotgun Wedding, is something altogether different, a frenetic action comedy that never puts on the brakes. It is a wild ride, no doubt but it isn’t the kind of wedding to which I need to be invited any time soon.

So the plot is pretty predictable, especially if you have seen a whole range of movies from Romancing The Stone to last Spring’s The Lost City, manic films that pairs a male and female star caught in treacherous circumstances and lets them argue and snap at each other for the better part of two hours as they face an onslaught of death-defying antics and stunts. Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum really made the format work big time last year and helped bring adult audiences back to the multiplex. Shotgun Wedding was intended to do the same thing, but somewhere along the way the Lionsgate film was unloaded on to Amazon Prime and will be largely a streaming attraction rather than the originally set theatrical plan (at least domestically). If it all gets to be a bit much for you at least it will be a lot easier to just turn off. Actually this is the kind of mindless popcorn entertainment that would benefit from being seen with a crowd. Comedies like this play better that way, but alas Amazon has other plans.

So here’s the plot: Lopez plays Darcy Rivera, a lawyer skittishly embarking on a tropical island wedding with friends and family all coming along for the exotic celebration in the Phillippines (the Dominican Republic stood in for the location