Steve Coulter | Through the Shattered Lens

A mildly amusing mix of romance, comedy, and action, Shotgun Wedding tells the story of Tom (Josh Duhamel) and Darcy (Jennifer Lopez).

Tom is a washed-up baseball player. Darcy is …. well, I’m not sure if the film ever really made clear what exactly Darcy does for a living. She comes from a wealthy family and she previously worked with the Peace Corps in Bali. After dating for four years, Tom and Darcy are finally getting married. Darcy wanted to have a simple wedding. Tom, however, becomes a groomzilla and plans an elaborate ceremony on a remote island resort. Sure, the island has occasionally been targeted by pirates but the owners of resort assure Tom that it probably won’t happen again.

The night before the wedding is fraught with drama. Darcy’s mother (Sonia Braga) is not happy that her ex-husband (Cheech Marin) has brought his new agey girlfriend (D’Arcy Carden) to the wedding. Tom’s mother (Jennifer Coolidge) insists that Tom and Darcy not sleep together the night before the ceremony. Meanwhile, Tom’s father (Steve Coulter, a genuinely funny actor) wanders about with an old school camcorder, recording everything. Darcy’s sister (Callie Hernandez) hooks up with one of Tom’s friends (Desmin Borges). Finally, Sean Hawkins (Lenny Kravitz) makes a dramatic entrance, even though he wasn’t exactly invited to the wedding. Sean was Darcy’s ex-fiancé, the man that she nearly married before she met Tom. Everyone loves Sean. When morning comes around, Tom and Darcy aren’t even sure they still want to get married.

That’s when the pirates show up.

Because Tom and Darcy were busy arguing, they weren’t present when the pirates took the rest of the wedding party hostage. Now, Tom and Darcy have to make their way through the jungle so that they can defeat the pirates, save the hostages, and work on their relationship problems. Along the way, both Tom and Darcy will discover that they’re capable of doing things that they never would have thought possible, like killing pirates.

Shotgun Wedding feels a bit like a throw back. It’s very easy to imagine Cameron Diaz or Jennifer Aniston or Sandra Bullock (or maybe even Jennifer Lopez) starring in this film in 2003, playing Darcy opposite someone like Ron Livingston, Owen Wilson, or Greg Kinnear. That’s not meant to be a complaint. There’s actually something rather pleasant about the film’s somewhat quaint approach to its story. Much like last year’s Marry Me, it feels like a throw back to a simpler time when everyone was willing to accept that there was no need for ambiguity when it came to portraying gun-toting pirates as being the bad guys.

Unlike Marry Me, in which Owen Wilson was able to hold his own opposite his glamourous co-star, Shotgun Wedding is pretty much dominated by Jennifer Lopez. Josh Duhamel has his moments as the not terribly bright Tom but significantly, those moments almost all occur while Darcy and Tom are separated. Indeed, much as how the studios used to pair Golden Age divas with forgettable leading men, it sometimes feel as if Duhamel was specifically cast because there was no danger of him taking the attention away from the movie’s main star. This is a film that was pretty much designed to show off Jennifer Lopez. With every scene, one can hear the movie whispering, “Isn’t she still funny? Doesn’t she still look good?” Fortunately, Jennifer Lopez is still funny and yes, she does still look good. Even more importantly, she’s more than capable of carrying a film like this and she delivers her lines with just the right amount of comedic exasperation. A running joke about how much she hates her wedding dress pays off in an unexpected way and the scenes in which Darcy confronts her fear of the sight of blood are enjoyably over-the-top. For someone who was once frequently been portrayed as being a diva in the tabloids. Lopez has always had a down-to-Earth screen presence and a talent for physical comedy. At their best, both this film and Jennifer Lopez are enjoyably silly.

Unfortunately, the film itself starts drag after the first hour and the film’s humor starts to wear thin. There’s only so many times you can listen to someone say something stupid while a pirate points a gun in their face before the joke starts to get stale. I still laughed at quite a few of the lines. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amusing film. But it’s not a particularly memorable one. It’s the type of movie that mildly entertains you for 100 minutes and then it quickly leaves your mind afterwards. In many ways, it’s ideal for the streaming era. If you left the house and paid money to sit in a theater and watch the film with a bunch of strangers, you might be more likely to get annoyed at how slight the film is. But, when watched in the safety of your own home, it’s a perfectly pleasant experience.

At first glance, Ed Wallis (Nat Wolff) seems like your typical nerdy high school student. An introvert who has a hard time making friends, Ed is a talented writer but what he really wants to do is play for his school’s legendary football team. One thing that sets Ed apart from cinematic nerds of the past is that he is not lacking in confidence. He’s shy but he understands what he’s capable of accomplishing. He knows he’s a good writer. He also know that he has the potential to be a good football player. When he crashes the team’s practice and manages to talk Coach Burton (Kevin Dunn) into giving him a shot, Ed proves that he’s the faster than anyone else on the team. And when one of the other players starts to bully him, Ed has no trouble convincing the quarterback to stand up for him. After all, as Ed explains it, if Ed’s not in a good mood than he’s not going to catch anything that the quarterback throws. And if Ed doesn’t make those catches, the quarterback won’t have a good game and, if he doesn’t have a good game, he won’t get any scholarship offers.

At first, Ed’s determination to play football horrifies both his mother, June (Sarah Silverman), and his best (and only) friend, Eloise (Emma Roberts). June is a single mother who terrifies Ed by openly discussing her sex life with him. Eloise, meanwhile, is a self-styled misfit who is nicknamed “weird girl” by Ed’s fellow jocks. It’s only after they see Ed playing on the field (and, not coincidentally, making the winning catch), that June and Eloise start to support Ed’s athletic dreams…

Meanwhile, Ed is getting to know his neighbor, Ashby (Mickey Rourke). Ashby is a former CIA agent who has just been informed that he has only a few months to live. Ed needs to talk to an old person for a class assignment. Ashby needs someone to drive him around town. At first, Ashby refuses to open up to Ed but slowly, Ashby starts to lower his defenses. Ashby is soon coming to Ed’s football games, flirting with June, and serving as a substitute father figure.

Of course, Asby is also murdering people. Though Ed doesn’t know it, the reason that Ashby keeps asking him for a ride is because Ashby is determined to track down and kill three men who he feels betrayed him. Ashby does this with the full knowledge that eventually, the CIA is going to send somebody to take him out…

Ashby is a mix of genres that don’t really go together. It’s a gentle coming-of-age comedy that’s also a violent revenge thriller. The end result is an extremely messy film that never finds a consistent tone. And yet, at the same time, that inconsistency is a part of the film’s strange charm. The film is so determined to make its oddball mix of genres work that you actually do find yourself rooting for it, even if it doesn’t quite succeed. Ashby is one of those films that shouldn’t work and yet, somehow, it does.

Some credit for that has to go to director Tony McNamara. He directs with a good eyes for detail (the satiric portrayal of both high school and suburbia feels totally authentic) and he keeps the action moving at such a quick pace that you really don’t have time to obsess over the film’s mishmash of themes and tones.

Even more credit, however, I think has to be given to the cast, all of whom show an admirable commitment to bringing their eccentric characters to life. Mickey Rourke’s plays Ashby as if he might be a distant relation to his character from The Wrestler while Sarah Silverman is so perfectly cast as June that you occasionally find yourself wishing that the entire film could be just about her. I’ve lost track of how many times Emma Roberts has been cast as a quirky high school girlfriend but she still brings as much depth as she can to her underwritten character.

Ultimately, though, the film belongs to Nat Wolff, who was so good (as was Emma Roberts) in last year’s Palo Alto. Wolff’s character in Ashby may not have much in common with the sociopath that he played in Palo Alto or the blind friend he played in The Fault In Our Stars, but Wolff brings a sly charm to all three roles and that charm convince the audience to not only accept but even embrace some of the film’s inconsistencies. Nat Wolff truly holds Asbhy together, helping the film to survive some of its more uneven moments.

Ashby has been given a limited theatrical release and is available through VOD. It’s definitely an uneven film but it’s worth seeing.