Shotgun Wedding

Directed by Jason Moore, Shotgun Wedding follows a couple (Jennifer Lopez’s Darcy and Josh Duhamel’s Tom) as their tropical wedding is hijacked by a gang of ruthless pirates. It’s an appealing premise that’s employed to decidedly erratic yet mostly watchable effect by Moore, as the filmmaker, armed with Mark Hammer’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced comedy that benefits from the superb efforts of its various stars – with Lopez and Duhamel’s charming work here matched (and periodically exceeded) by such top-notch periphery players as Lenny Kravitz, D’Arcy Carden, and Jennifer Coolidge. (It’s perhaps not surprising to note that the picture’s biggest laughs are courtesy of the latter’s thoroughly oddball performance.) There’s little doubt, however, that Shotgun Wedding suffers from an almost relentlessly hit-and-miss vibe that prevents the viewer from wholeheartedly connecting to the material, with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a continuing emphasis on larger-than-life jokes and gags that are perhaps not quite as hilarious as Moore has intended. (And this is to say nothing of the air of artificiality hanging over the entire proceedings, ultimately.) By the time the somewhat inevitable climax rolls around, Shotgun Wedding has cemented its place as a decent-enough endeavor that passes the time without making any kind of real, memorable impact.

**1/2 out of ****