Prime Time: Bride Hard (2025)

If you want an action comedy with a talented female comedian in the main role then I could direct you towards one or two options. If you want an action comedy set against the backdrop of a wedding then I know of at least one that I would tentatively recommend. Bride Hard gives you a bit of both, although it depends on how talented and funny you find star Rebel Wilson. I would say that this is one of her best vehicles in the last decade, but that's damning it with faint praise.

Wilson plays Sam, a woman trying to enjoy her role as Maid Of Honour for her bestie, Betsy (Anna Camp). Unfortunately, Sam is often called away to her job, which is exciting and dangerous. Unbeknownst to most of the people around her, Sam is a spy. This makes her a bit unreliable when it comes to schedules and parties, leading to her being replaced in the Maid Of Honour role by Virginia (Anna Chlumsky), but she's very handy to have around when the big wedding day is gate-crashed by a group of mercenary robbers. 

The first feature to be produced from a screenplay by Shaina Steinberg, this feels like something that was very loosely plotted to allow plenty of space and time for Wilson to riff in her particular style. That could have gone badly, but the fact that the supporting cast allows for everyone else to have a bit of fun (Camp, Chlumsky, and both Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Gigi Zumbado are especially good as the other members of the bridal party). It's also good to have Stephen Dorff as the main villain, Justin Hartley being a bit of eye candy for the ladies in the first act, and a good selection of fairly familiar faces in some smaller roles.

Simon West knows what he's doing in the director's chair. While the gags aren't always as funny as they could be, nor the action as satisfying and slick as more straightforward, and more violent, outings, the ration feels just about right. This is passable entertainment for those browsing their streaming options and looking for something easygoing and fun, even if one or two moments seem determined to bring you out of the movie with the implausibility of it all.

I would definitely revisit the movies alluded to in the first paragraph ahead of this one, but I didn't mind it while it was on. The pacing is decent, a few of the running gags had me chuckling often enough, and there's some obvious messaging about the bonds of friendship being strained as life keeps throwing life stuff in the way. And it might just put you in the mood to rewatch Bridesmaids, which is always a good thing. 

6/10

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Tinsel Town (2025)

It's no surprise to find that Tinsel Town is directed by Chris Foggin. He's done comforting family-friendly fare a few times now, and has at least one other Christmas movie under his belt. The surprise comes from the fact that this formulaic bit of fun needed at least three main writers, as well as additional material from three other contributors (apparently). Maybe that's why it's so inconsistent though. Some of the expected scenes fall flat, but a few moments really hit the spot. And I was pleasantly surprised to find the panto moments actually feeling like panto moments.

Kiefer Sutherland stars here as Bradley Mack, a movie star who has coasted along on the success of an action movie franchise for some time now. He's not viewed as a great actor though, nor as a great human being. In fact, he's lazy, entitled, and about to crash back down to earth when his agent send him for a theatre gig in England that is actually panto in a small village. There's no way out of it. Bradley can't afford the price it would cost to wangle out of the contract he signed without reading it. So he ends up grumpy in the company of Cassandra (Meera Syal), Jill (Rebel Wilson), a pair of ugly sisters (Asim Chaudhry and Jason Manford), among others. On the plus side, he can spend some quality time with his young daughter, Emma (Matilda Firth). If he can stop being so selfish and self-pitying for long enough.

There's certainly fun to be had here. The lead character being bamboozled by his English village surroundings, and the very notion of panto, allows for some chuckles, as does the occasional angry outburst. There's even an effective musical number for Sutherland, while his character is in his full costume for Buttons, his panto role. The expected transformation of our lead isn't handled very well though, it's more a series of sudden turnarounds than a gradual journey to a much better place, and a few elements feel like they should have some more impact on the plot. Danny Dyer is a local bad boy, Kieran, who antagonises people, but could have ultimately been left out of the movie. The same goes for a minor sub-plot about a number of local burglaries, which may or may not have been sanctioned by Kieran.

While Foggin directs well enough, the awkward screenplay leaves everything in the hands of the cast. Sutherland is a big plus in the main role, and game enough to fully embrace his panto turn (once his character finds out that there's no way out of it), Katherine Ryan has a few fun moments as the angry agent, and young Firth does well as the child who retains faith in a man that many others have long since given up on. Derek Jacobi also brings something special to the project, especially in a key scene that explains how someone can keep the theatre at the heart of their life. Wilson isn't so good, to put it mildly. Not only is she stuck delivering a standard dramatic turn, she's also required to do so (for some reason) with a Yorkshire accent. It's not a great delivery, and that choice feels like it could have been easily swerved with one explanatory line of dialogue. Chaudhry and Manford are fun, Lucien Laviscount and Savannah Lee Smith are pleasant enough, and Dyer does what Dyer does. Alice Eve and James Lance are sadly wasted though, and it's a shame that the actual Yorkshire setting isn't given more of a supporting role.

The good just about outweighs the bad, but it's a very close call. The extra writers seem to have tried to overstuff the runtime, the cast could all have been given pages for at least three very different films, and there's a disappointing lack of full-on Christmas sweetness for the majority of the runtime. It really nails that panto atmosphere at times though, and the final scenes are sweet, funny, and rewarding. Which means it should at least leave you with a smile on your face as the end credits roll.

5/10

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Netflix And Chill: Senior Year (2022)

I have been someone who, for a few years now, has gone against the majority opinion when it comes to Rebel Wilson. I actually think that she's good at what she does. Well, I used to think that. I am now, belatedly, coming to agree with the people who dislike her film appearances. Just a quick glance over her recent movie roles is enough to show that the bad far outweighs the good. And Senior Year is one of the bad ones.

In a standard ridiculous movie concept, Stephanie is a young woman who managed to turn herself from uncool nerd to super-popular cheerleader captain, with the boyfriend she always wanted and her life unfolding exactly the way she wanted it. That all changes when a cheerleading move leads to her being comatose for twenty years. When she finally wakes up, Stephanie (now played by Rebel Wilson) struggles to adjust. It was just moments ago that she was about to become Prom Queen. She still wants that. She wants her moment. But a lot of things have changed. Her friend, Martha (Mary Holland), is now the school principal. Another friend, Seth (Sam Richardson), works at the school. Both would like to help Stephanie adjust, but both find themselves disappointed and unsurprised when she starts to fall back into very bad habits, spurred on by social media and a desperate need to right the ship that sailed away without her twenty years ago.

Written by Andrew Knauer, Arthur Pielli, and Brandon Scott Jones, the biggest problem with Senior Year is the fact that the central character is too thoroughly unpleasant. That's sometimes all well and good, especially when you expect a predictable bit of redemption and some lessons learned in the third act, but this is a film that doesn't really rectify anything that way. It tries to make it look that way, but it doesn't. So you have someone who has, for the most part, acted like an asshat to many people around her, and she avoids any punishment that feels proportionate to her actions.

Director Alex Hardcastle has a pretty easy job, keeping Wilson as the focus while things move from one scene utilising a pop hit and some nostalgia to the next scene . . . often utilising a pop hit and some nostalgia. The fact that it all ends with the kind of sing-and-dancealong moment usually shoehorned in at the end of an animated family flick maybe indicates how much he underestimates anyone choosing to view this. The problems may have come from the script, but Hardcastle just seeming to go along with everything really compounds them.

Wilson is Wilson. This isn't a good role for her, but she has moments where she gets to deliver her usual schtick, which can lead to an occasional chuckle. Thankfully, the supporting cast are much better, with Holland once again stealing the show (she was also great in Happiest Season) and Richardson very sweet and funny as the friend who has long held a candle for Stephanie. Zoë Chao is the high school nemesis who has grown up and starts off by pretending that the past is left in the past (spoiler - it's not), Justin Hartley is very funny as Blaine, her husband who was once dating Stephanie, and Chris Parnell plays a typically wonderful movie dad. Other good turns come from Avantika and Joshua Colley, students who befriend Stephanie when she rejoins high school, and Jade Bender, playing the daughter of the old high school nemesis who is manipulated by her mother into competing with someone she doesn't want to compete with.

I really disliked the first third of this, the middle section was a bit better, and I can't say that I completely hated the third act while everything was playing out. Thinking about it more though, as the terrible musical sequence was playing out, I started to resent giving it my time. I feel bad for contributing to whatever viewing figures are collected for these streaming releases, and I hope others don't make my mistake. Although it's not irredeemably awful, this is bad. I hope those who still managed to make the most of their roles are rewarded by some better movie options in their near future. And I hope that the director and writers seriously consider their approach to the medium before their next project.

4/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Hustle (2019)

There's a part of me that realises I am being a tiny bit unfair to The Hustle by judging it so harshly against Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, one of my favourite comedies of all time. That film is itself based on an earlier film, Bedtime Story, which I have still not seen. And here we have something that works the premise for a third time, placing female stars in where there were previously men. Those women are played by Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson, which may be a mark against the film already for some.

Wilson plays Penny Rust, a small-time con artist who enjoys preying on men and getting them to hand money over to her. She never feels guilt, there's always a point that shows her that they deserved to be parted from their cash. Hathaway is Josephine Chesterfield, a con artist who plans more sophisticated schemes for much greater rewards. When these two cross paths, Josephine tries to send Penny away. Failing at that, she instead opts to train her, using her in some cons that make use of her talents. But there can only be one to really rule the roost, which is when the two bet on extracting a set sum of money from a young tech millionaire, Thomas Westerburg (Alex Sharp).

The feature directorial debut from Chris Addison, who has had a decent bit of practice with TV work over the years, The Hustle is a strange film to judge. Addison, who has been acting onscreen for just over a decade and has been part of some great comedy shows, seems to think that he's landed the perfect leads in Hathaway and Wilson. That's not the case, and it's this wrong decision that constantly threatens to sink the film.

Not that Hathaway is bad. She just doesn't feel right for the role. The same can be said for Wilson. Her con work never feels believable, because she has to spin things further and make them sillier and sillier. Even Sharp, not at all terrible, just doesn't feel right. That's the biggest problem the film has, the cast.

The script has lines to make you laugh, many of the best ones either unchanged, or only slightly changed, from the original script. It's also good when it allows Hathaway to roll her eyes and effortlessly one-up Wilson, but not so good when things feel most adjusted to either cater to a more modern sensibility, or manipulated to be in line with the style of Wilson. There's something about this premise, two con artists who decide to compete in a beautiful location to extract a set amount of money from one target, that lends itself to a timeless quality, something that then makes any talk of apps feel jarring. And the same goes for the many insults Wilson fires at Hathaway, as chucklesome as they sometimes are in their own right.

Perhaps I am being far too harsh, perhaps I am still being too kind to make up for my self-perceived harshness, but The Hustle doesn't ever work. Even the final scenes seem to get things wrong, in a small but very obvious way (to those familiar with the previous take on the material).

4/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.

Jojo Rabbit (2019)

Based on a novel by Christine Leunens, Jojo Rabbit is another film written and directed by Taika Waititi, and another great mix of humour and emotion. It may not be his best film, and it's easy to initially view it as his weakest, but I suspect that it will grow on most people, over time.

Roman Griffin Davis is Jojo, a young boy living in Germany towards the end of WWII. Every child has an imaginary friend at some stage, Jojo has Hitler (Waititi). He also has a real friend in the shape of Yorki (Archie Yates), a loving mother (Rosie, played by Scarlett Johansson), and lessons in the best way to serve Germany from the likes of Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell) and Fraulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson). Jojo's worldview is challenged when he discovers that his mother has been hiding a young Jewish girl (Elsa, played by Thomasin McKenzie) in their home.

I've seen some criticisms of Jojo Rabbit that seem to want to boil it down to "be nice to Nazis, because not all Nazis are bad" and I've seen comments being critical of opinions on the film that seem simplistic and naive. Both of these things are true, to some extent, and that stems from the way in which Waititi has wrangled his message of hope and optimism into a fun satire that is itself wrapped up in a layer of wide-eyed childish innocence and absorption. It may not be as simple as it seems, at first glance, but none of the more complex thoughts undo the central ideas of always maintaining the capability of love destroying hate.

Davis is superb in the main role, which will come as no surprise to anyone used to Waititi's knack for picking absolutely wonderful child stars for his project. Although not in it as much as I would have liked him to be, Yates is quite hilarious as the friend who isn't going to strain himself by thinking of the world events unfolding around him. Johansson is a solid anchor, and a pivot around which everything, and everyone, revolves. McKenzie is easily on par with Davis in her role, and the comedic turns from Rockwell and Wilson help, even underlining a couple of very serious moments in the third act. Alfie Allen does well in a small role, Stephen Merchant is very funny in his one main scene, and Waititi plays his sprung-from-the-mind-of-a-child version of Hitler very much like a version of him sprung from the mind of a child.

With the mix of quirky characters, the shot composition, and specific soundtrack choices, fans of Wes Anderson may occasionally forget that this is a Waititi film. It's been given a layer of artificiality that helps to create just enough distance between what we know of the atrocities committed by the Nazis and what we're being shown onscreen. The whole thing is a tightrope-walk, of course, but Waititi is up to the task. I can even see his reasoning behind some of the decisions made that I don't entirely agree with.

Imperfect and odd, Jojo Rabbit manages to do what it sets out to do. It makes you laugh, it provides some immensely powerful moments, and it sends you onward with a sense that there is always hope for humanity while individuals continue to hold on to their natural ability to, against some major odds, do the right thing.

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: Isn't It Romantic (2019)

When I first heard about Isn't It Romantic I thought that it was going to cover the same ground as They Came Together. It wasn't. Instead, I got something that felt like a cross between I Feel Pretty and The Final Girls (which was, funnily enough, also from this director, Todd Strauss-Schulson).

Rebel Wilson plays a young woman named Natalie. Natalie is an architect, although a lot of people around her seems to treat her as a general dogsbody. Natalie is also quite the cynic, and has been taught from a young age (as we see in the opening scene) to always keep in mind that rom-coms are just nonsense, full of things that would never happen to someone like herself. Which makes it worse when, one day after struggling with a mugger and running into a metal beam, Natalie wakes up in hospital, and wakes up in the middle of what seems to be her own romantic comedy. Will this allow her to learn some kind of valuable lesson, or is it just going to be an endurance test until she can figure out a way back to normality.

A lot of Rebel Wilson performances depend very much on how you feel about Rebel Wilson. I tend to enjoy her work but each subsequent movie highlights the fact that she always plays things the same way. That can work, and you could say the same of her male co-star here (Adam Devine, who plays the smug moron-cum-douchebag in 90% of the movies he has done), but it's not something to rely on forever. She's fine here, and given decent support from a core group that includes Devine (the best friend who might end up being more than that), Liam Hemsworth (very . . .  "beguiling" . . .  as the hunky love interest), Priyanka Chopra (woman who Devine falls for, providing standard complication), Betty Gilpin (friendly work colleague in the real world, acidic workplace enemy underused in the rom-com world), and Brandon Scott Jones (popping up to be the subgenre-requisite gay BFF).

No one in the cast stands out as a bad choice. The big problem here lies elsewhere. The script. Written by Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox, and Katie Silberman, Isn't It Romantic has some funny and clever moments here and there, especially when it comes to censored swearing and transitions that imply sex without showing anything happening, but everything centres on a central idea that doesn't work. Wilson knows all of the tropes, and rolls her eyes at all of them, yet she goes along with them all while commenting on her displeasure. This allows the film to underline everything in every scene, making it less fun. Not only do viewers have everything spoon-fed to them while being bashed on the head with a rom-com rubber mallet, they also get constantly reminded that what they're watching is nonsense and (essentially) without any value. Where the movies mentioned in the first paragraph had a certain sweetness and optimism at the heart of them, whether you liked them or not, this has a cynicism in line with the main character, and that sours what could have been a very enjoyable rom-com that wore some layers of cool meta clothing.

Strauss-Schulson does a good job with the direction, ensuring that this always feels like your standard rom-com, from the visual style of each scene to frequent use of uplifting pop standards on the soundtrack. The film feels infused by every modern rom-com, helped there by the script, but nothing can quite outweigh the misjudged tone. I would have liked to laugh along with this film, instead it feels like they're pointing at things for you to laugh at.

There are laughs to be had, and a couple of fun musical numbers, but this is ultimately a disappointment, despite making a very good point during the grand finale.

5/10

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Bachelorette (2012)

Kirsten Dunst plays Regan, a tense, controlling young woman who starts to fret when she finds out that her friend, Becky (Rebel Wilson), is about to get married. Becky wasn't supposed to be the first one of the group to get married, as Regan reminds Gena (Lizzy Caplan) and Katie (Isla Fisher). Things weren't supposed to happen that way. Regardless, the time comes around for the bachelorette party, something that Becky wants to be a quiet affair. It doesn't pan out that way, of course.

Written and directed by Leslye Headland, based on her own play, Bachelorette is saved from being completely unwatchable by Kaplan and Adam Scott (playing Clyde, the ex-boyfriend of Caplan's character). James Marsden also puts in another great performance - the more I think about it, the more I like Marsden - and Rebel Wilson is likable enough in her role. But that's where the good stuff ends.

While I watched this movie I started to suspect that it was from a first-time director. Some of the mistakes here aren't that bad, but then there are glaring flaws that unsettle the whole thing, and ultimately sink it completely.

First of all, most of the characters are loathsome. Movies can feature loathsome characters, but this lot really take the biscuit. And there's no reason to believe that they would be friends. As the old saying goes: "with friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Second, stemming from the first, everything that goes wrong and puts the characters under pressure is caused by the characters themselves. Everything onscreen here could have been easily avoided if the lead characters weren't so selfish/stupid.

None of the drama is effective, none of the comedy is funny, and you may spend most of the movie, as I did, just wishing for it to end. It doesn't help that Dunst and Fisher aren't on good form, although they may have simply been unable to overcome the weak material.

The silver lining for Leslye Headland is that she can only get better from here.

2/10

http://www.amazon.com/Bachelorette-Blu-ray-Wilson/dp/B00B17U2VS/ref=sr_1_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1399528406&sr=1-3&keywords=bachelorette

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