Bride Hard sets out to combine a bawdy Bridesmaids-style wedding comedy with an action-packed Die Hard-style hostage thriller. Rebel Wilson stars as the maid of honor at her best friend’s wedding, who’s secretly a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly government agent with enemies. When mercenaries attack the wedding and her two lives crash together, she springs into action. It’s a great premise, but it needed a director and star who could handle both action and comedy (i.e. Edgar Wright and Sandra Bullock, or James Gunn and Jennifer Lawrence). Instead, it’s got a director who’s well-versed in action and Wilson, who’s well-versed in comedy, so the two genres never gel.

Wilson is great at delivering ᴅᴇᴀᴅpan one-liners, but I don’t buy her as an action hero. It’s distractingly obvious when it cuts to her stunt double, and it breaks the illusion of make-believe. Simon West, on the other hand, is one of the best action directors in Hollywood. His first movie was Con Air, an all-time classic of the genre, and he’s since helmed the best Expendables movie and a couple of great Jason Statham vehicles. But he’s much less adept at making comedic beats land. He doesn’t get into the rhythm of comic banter the same way he gets into the rhythm of gunplay.

The best gags are part of the action. The fight scenes find creative ways to weaponize every mundane item you might find at a wedding: a curling iron, a serving tray, a champagne bottle, a crème brûlée torch. “It’s Raining Men” is played over a brawl in the kitchen for a memorable needle-drop, and the movie makes great use of a Chekhov’s gun. It introduces a Civil War-era cannon upon arrival at the wedding venue, and I was delighted to see that cannon get some use in the final act. But the fun begins and ends with those isolated moments.

Bride Hard Squanders Its Star-Studded Cast With Tepid Material

Actors Like Sherry Cola & Da’Vine Joy Randolph Do Their Best To Elevate A Weak Script

There are some really wonderful actors in this cast: Wilson’s Pitch Perfect co-star Anna Camp plays the bride, Veep’s Anna Chlumsky plays the vindictive, pᴀssive-aggressive sister-in-law-to-be, and Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph steals every scene as the wildcard bridesmaid. Stephen Dorff has a ton of fun hamming it up as the Hans Gruber-esque ringleader of the villains and Joy Ride’s Sherry Cola does her best to elevate tepid material. But the talents of all those great actors are wasted in what could be mistaken for a made-for-TV movie.

Tonally, Bride Hard is all over the place. It opens with a heartfelt montage of childhood home movies, which is weirdly sincere for a movie with this premise. It has wacky slapstick gags like faceplanting into a flowerbed and goofy stylistic touches like whip-pan scene transitions and cartoonish whooshing sound effects. It plays an over-the-top action score over the action scenes and a whimsical, lighthearted comedy score over the comedy, but switches to cloyingly tender, melodramatic music when it shifts into even the mildest emotional scene.

Bride Hard Completely Lost Me In The Third Act

I Just Didn’t Care About The Plot Or Any Of The Characters

The movie wants you to buy into the stakes of this dangerous situation, but no one seems scared about being held at gunpoint. Seconds after they’ve been taken hostage, they’re all singing “My Neck, My Back” to a pregnant bridesmaid’s unborn child. The film doesn’t care enough to take its plot seriously, and it doesn’t have enough absurdist fun to work as pure outlandish comedy, so it completely lost me by the third act. I didn’t care about the plot, I didn’t care about any of the characters, and I didn’t care if the wedding went ahead; I just wanted it to be over.

Toward the end of the movie, a character remarks, “It’s like a Hallmark Christmas movie!” They’re making a joke, but honestly, with awkward acting, corny dialogue, predictable plotting, and terrible green screen effects, it sometimes feels like one. The joke writing is atrocious — after a climactic explosion, the bride makes the interminable pun, “At least my wedding is lit!” — and the tearful final reunion isn’t earned at all. Even the outtakes that play alongside the end credits aren’t funny. We’re only halfway through the year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Bride Hard ends up being the worst movie of 2025.