Arts & Entertainment

Zaniness abounds in new J.Lo action-romcom ‘Shotgun Wedding’

Los Angeles, Jan 27 (EFE).- A screenplay packed with adrenaline-fueled action, non-stop laughs and overall zaniness convinced Jennifer Lopez to make her latest foray into the romantic comedy genre in “Shotgun Wedding,” a new Amazon Studios picture that the actress and singer said was a blast to film.

“I love romantic comedies. I think people know that I’m a romantic, and a lot of these movies have to do with weddings,” Lopez told Efe.

“This one in particular is really different than a lot of (her previous wedding movies) … this one had a real adventure, action element to it that was different and had more of a kind of broad comedy to it that was kind of fun in tone to play around with.”

Directed by Jason Moore, written by Mark Hammer and released Friday on Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming platform, “Shotgun Wedding” tells the story of Tom Fowler (Josh Duhamel) and Darcy Rivera (Lopez), a middle-aged couple who gather with their eccentric and opinionated relatives for a quickly arranged destination wedding in the Philippines.

While the neurotic Tom sets his sights on a perfect wedding in an exotic locale, Darcy would have preferred just to elope with her fiance and decides to leave him in charge of the proceedings.

“I’m probably more like Tom (in real life). Not as much of a ‘bridezilla’ (a woman who becomes excessively demanding while planning her wedding), I’d like to think, but definitely involved in the details,” said Lopez, who married American actor Ben Affleck last July.

A wrench is thrown into the mix when Sean Hawkins (Lenny Kravitz), Darcy’s suave and charismatic ex-boyfriend, crashes the wedding and brings out Tom’s insecurities, causing the couple to reexamine whether they really want to spend the rest of their lives together.

Kravitz, who has appeared in films such as “Precious” and “The Hunger Games,” told Efe he accepted the role as a means of escaping the “surreal” experience of the pandemic-triggered lockdowns.

Referring to his character as “kind of a ridiculous version” of himself, the multiple Grammy Award-winning recording artist said that aspect made the film even more appealing.

“The character of Sean was fun just because he wasn’t what he seemed to be, what he was portraying, how he wanted everybody to perceive him, and he has a different outcome than you might think,” the singer-songwriter and actor said.

But Sean’s tumultuous arrival is nothing compared to what comes next, when a group of mask-wearing Asian pirates hold nearly the entire wedding party – minus the bride and groom, who had needed some time alone – for ransom at gunpoint.

Chaos and mayhem ensue, with the couple fleeing into the jungle in full wedding attire and concocting a survival plan that includes ziplining over the beach and blasting the bad guys with a hand grenade.

Darcy’s loopy future mother-in-law Carol Fowler (Jennifer Coolidge, recent winner of a Golden Globe best-supporting actress award) even gets in on the act by spraying submachine gun fire Rambo-style.

The remainder of the cast includes Cheech Marin, Steve Coulter, D’Arcy Carden and Callie Hernandez.

“I just had so much fun going to work every day because it was as much physical as it was emotional and every day was different and we’re in these crazy, beautiful locations. And all of that made for one of my favorite times ever making a movie,” Duhamel said.

Coolidge, for her part, joked that she most enjoyed having the opportunity to wield a “massive gun” and transform herself into a “bad ass for a second.”

Marin told Efe that a bit of craziness and unpredictability typically go hand-in-hand with weddings.

“The commitment is the biggest commitment you’ll make in your life, unless you do it like 27 times … because you’re pledging your life to somebody else and you don’t know where it’s going and usually it goes in directions you would never think of, as this movie does,” he said. EFE

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