J-Lo Looks Good in “Wedding”

It’s a little like “Diehard” vs. the Pirates

By Jocelyn Noveck AP National Writer

Spoiler alert: J.Lo looks fantastic in a wedding dress.

You surely knew that, given not only the plethora of wedding-themed movies Jennifer Lopez has made over the years, from “The Wedding Planner” to “Monster-in-Law” to the recent “Marry Me,” but also her own offscreen life, of course.

And now comes “Shotgun Wedding,” where the ageless pop star and rom-com queen dons a pouffy white concoction that gradually sheds layers of tulle

Movie Review

to become increasingly sexy as Lopez fights off not only cringey wedding guests but machinegun toting pirates. She switches at one point to combat boots – plucked from a dead guy! –over wedding heels, and here’s another spoiler alert: if anyone can make combat boots work with pouffy tulle while running in slow motion, it’s Lopez.

But all the charm and style in the world, and J.Lo has more than anyone, can’t make up for the bizarre tonal imbalance of “Shotgun Wedding,” a movie too violent to be funny and too funny (in the odd, weird sense) to be fun. The movie, directed by Jason Moore, also commits the unlikely crime of underusing that other bulletproof Jennifer of the moment, Jennifer

Coolidge, who often seems to be searching palpably for decent lines. Come on, people! You had BOTH Jennifers! This should have been a slam dunk.

Kudos, though, to whoever picked the stunning resort for this particular destination wedding (the shoot took place in the Dominican Republic, standing in for the Philippines). It’s here that we first meet Darcy, our bride, at the rehearsal dinner, already looking so much better than everyone else, in resort wear and turquoise chunky jewelry – but we digress.

Darcy is navigating a guest list filled with proverbial hand grenades, even before the real grenades start flying. There’s her icy mother (Sonia Braga, also sadly underused), who is divorced from her father (Cheech Marin) and appalled at the oddly ditzy new girlfriend he’s

Fair: HHH

brought to the wedding (D’Arcy Carden). Mom tells Darcy she should have accepted her dad’s millions (or billions?) to make the wedding perfect, but Darcy replies that the couple wanted to do it their way. Besides, they’re grownups.

The groom, you ask? We’re getting to that. Initially the part was to be played by Ryan Reynolds, a tantalizing comedic possibility. Then it was to be Armie Hammer, who stepped aside for obvious reasons, and now we have Josh Duhamel, perfectly handsome and agreeable but . the chemistry rests with Lopez, and not between them.

In a clever twist, Tom is the “groomzilla,” obsessed with wedding details, and spray-