If there was ever doubt about the sheer talent possessed by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and there shouldn’t be after her Oscar®-winning turn in THE HOLDOVERS, it should be dispelled once and for all after seeing her take charge of the morass that is BRIDE HARD. Tasked with playing Lydia, a one-note character, and one that could easily devolve into offensive stereotypes of several varieties, she uses a a gleeful aplomb to turn her into a blazing avatar of female independence and power. In a film that suffers from a rickety script and laissez-faire direction, Ms. Randolph refuses to be limited by her situation. Instead, she had created a whole film for herself that interacts only tangentially with the rest of the action, and as a result, has given us all a reason to cheer.
That and learning the weaponizing possibilities of flour, but I am getting ahead of myself.
The center of the story, sadly, is not Lydia. It is Sam (Rebel Wilson), a spy with a gift for hand-to-hand combat and McGyver-ing lethal chaos. She’s also the future maid of honor for Betsy (Anna Camp), her best friend since childhood, though they’ve lost touch over the years what with Sam moving away when they were 11, and the whole secretly keeping the world safe from evil. That all changes when Sam is forced to ditch Betsey’s bachelorette party in Paris to once again save thousands of lives, and her role is taken over by Betsey’s future sister-in-law, the psychotic control freak, Virginia (Anna Chlumsky).
After being talked into attending the wedding anyway by fellow spy/psych evaluator, Nadine (Sherry Cola), Sam flies to the private Georgia island where Betsey’s wedding will take place. And it’s a good thing. Terrorists, led by Kurt (Stephen Dorff) take over the stately mansion there, holding the well-heeled guest hostage just after Sam and Betsey have a fight that ends their friendship forever.
This is a set-up rife with piquant possibilities, few of them explored. The script would not know originality or finesse if they walked up to it and then shared a PowerPoint presentation with advanced graphics and professional narration by way of introducing themselves. Which is not to say that Ms. Wilson does not give it her all with her cockeyed timing and ironic delivery whether discussing her emotional support boobs or crushing on the impossibly handsome best man (Justin Hartley), or wielding curling irons like num-chuks and exploring the flammability of the ci-mentioned flour, And all as she takes on the horde of terrorists single-handed while wearing a ruffled nightmare of a bridesmaid’s dress. The pacing is against her though, with a decidedly inert approach to the visuals that undercut any dynamism, or heaven forefend, humor. The irritating thing is that you can see what the film is getting at, but any energy detected is that of desperation. Ms. Camp is valiant as the bland cutie while Ms. Chlumsky is so humorlessly wild-eyed that her intensity plays like someone needing to be tranquilized and taken to a professional facility.
I’m seeing the next Bond supervillain, but that’s just me.
Ah, but then there’s Ms. Randolph, dismissing fools with a scornfully languid shrug, seducing a terrorist who is helpless to resist her, and frankly lusting after handsome men with a palpable libido capable of delivering on every promise all while delivering tepid dialogue with innuendo worthy of Mae West. The others on screen don’t stand a chance.
BRIDE HARD isn’t absurd enough to be farce, nor funny enough to be a comedy, nor nimble enough to succeed at its attempts at sentimentality. Sure, it’s fun to involve chocolate fountains in a gunfight, but characters scampering around in their finery in a landscape awash in product placement is a premise, not a feature-length film.
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