{"id":12719,"date":"2025-08-06T23:01:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T03:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=12719"},"modified":"2025-08-06T23:01:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T03:01:15","slug":"bride-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/08\/06\/bride-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Bride Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Bride Hard<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Magenta Light Studios\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (sexual references, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Simon West\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Shaina Steinberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ryan Shore\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alan Caudillo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 20, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Stephen Dorff, Justin Hartley, Anna Chlumsky, Da\u2019Vine Joy Randolph, Gigi Zumbado, Sherry Cola, Michael O\u2019Neill, Sam Huntington, Colleen Camp, Craig Anton, Remy Ortiz, Kristian Kordula, Jeff Chase.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Box Office: $932,000 (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I suppose it makes sense to watch a movie like Bride Hard<\/strong> in August. It\u2019s the kind of low-level action-comedy that typically opens in the latter part of summer. The studio dumps it into theaters hoping it\u2019ll make a few bucks now that it\u2019s not going directly up against any of the big hitters of early summer. Unfortunately, it is going up against other low-level movies released by their studios with the same mindset. It\u2019s a no-win situation because typically, none of them make a nickel.<\/p>\n

\u00a0All of this, of course, is academic. I didn\u2019t see Bride Hard<\/strong> at the cinema. It didn\u2019t open at my local multiplex this past June and I wasn\u2019t up for a road trip. I figured it would hit streaming by August and I was right. I watched it at home on a Friday night. I heard all sorts of bad reviews on it, but I generally don\u2019t take anyone else\u2019s word on the subject of movies. I prefer to make up my own mind. As it so happens in this case, I disagree with my fellow critics. I rather enjoyed it. Sure, it\u2019s dumb and formulaic, but somehow it works.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Simon West (Con Air, The Expendables 2), Bride Hard<\/strong> is a cross between Bridesmaids and Die Hard. A slimmed-down Rebel Wilson (Pitch Perfect 1-3) stars as Sam, the maid of honor for her best friend Betsy (Pitch Perfect co-star Camp) who\u2019s about to take the plunge. The problem is Sam isn\u2019t the most reliable person in the world. Her job is time-consuming to the point where Sam has missed a few crucial things (e.g. dress fitting, cake tasting). Even more annoying, she can\u2019t tell anybody what she really does for a living. She\u2019s a secret government agent. That would make any kind of personal relationship complicated.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The last straw for Betsy occurs when Sam has to leave the bachelorette party in Paris (moved there at the last minute) in order to retrieve a bioweapon from some baddies. Drunk and exasperated, Betsy announces her best friend since childhood is out as maid of honor and soon-to-be sister-in-law Virginia (Chlumsky, My Girl) is in. You\u2019ve heard of Bridezillas? This woman is Maidzilla.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One of Sam\u2019s colleagues (Cola, Joy Ride) urges her to attend the wedding anyway now that she\u2019s been temporarily benched for going rogue one too many times. It\u2019s being held at the groom\u2019s family\u2019s private island estate in Savannah. It\u2019s a tense situation with Virginia proving she\u2019s the queen of passive-aggressive with her treatment of Sam. It gets worse when Sam, feeling left out, flirts with the hunky best man Chris (Hartley, Tracker) at the rehearsal dinner. A close friend of the family, Virginia has had her eye of him for years.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The wedding day is fraught with drama with Betsy and Sam having a tiff just minutes before the ceremony. The emotional bride tells her friend to leave. Thankfully, she\u2019s slow to depart. Wedding crashers show up in the form of a team of mercenaries led by Kurt (Dorff, The Gate). They\u2019ve come not to celebrate the couple\u2019s nuptials but to steal the gold locked in the family vault. It can only be opened with the family\u2019s wedding rings. The thieves, armed to the teeth, take the entire wedding party hostage. Sam jumps right into action, taking down bad guys while trying to fix things with her best friend.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ve long held that Rebel Wilson deserves leading lady status. She\u2019s proven this in movies like Isn\u2019t It Romantic (2019), The Hustle (2019) and Senior Year (2022). In Bride Hard<\/strong>, she really gets to unleash her inner bad ass, but in a comedic way. She commands the screen like a pro as she deals with black-clad gunmen and a MOH from hell. She even has a bit of MacGyver in her, using an improvised blowgun to take Virginia down a notch.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Wilson receives ample support from Camp who shows she\u2019s up to the challenge of helping to save her wedding day. Chlumsky, all grown up now (I\u2019m crying here), is funny as an overgrown mean girl. The bridal party is rounded out by Da\u2019Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers) and Gigi Zumbado (Heart Eyes) as sexed-up Lydia and pregnant Zoe. Along with Virginia, they\u2019re a force to be reckoned with.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Dorff, all grown up too (crying harder), makes a pretty good bad guy, but he lacks the menace and slimy charisma of Alan Rickman. That\u2019s fine; Bride Hard<\/strong> is supposed to be a comedy. Hartley shows he has big screen appeal as the cute guy who\u2019s more than he seems. A deadpan Cola makes the most of her few scenes. Colleen Camp (Clue), one of the film\u2019s producers and NO relation to Anna, is funny as the bride\u2019s mother, married multiple times. Sam Huntington (Detroit Rock City) has his moments as the groom.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The action scenes, despite some obvious CGI, are capably executed. The plot is as predictable as they come right down to the traitor in the wedding party. The screenplay by Shaina Steinberg is right out of Action-Comedy 101. HOWEVER, there\u2019s something to be said for a wedding-themed movie in which the bridal party goes commando (NOT that way!), wielding guns and swords in pursuit of freedom, justice and the exchange of vows.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I liked Bride Hard<\/strong>. It\u2019s not a classic by any means, but it\u2019s damn good for a film that has August release written all over it. I wouldn\u2019t even mind seeing a Bride Hard 2. After all, Betsy\u2019s first baby is going to need a godmother.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bride Hard (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Magenta Light Studios\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (sexual references, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Simon West\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Shaina Steinberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ryan Shore\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Alan Caudillo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: June 20, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Stephen Dorff, Justin Hartley, Anna Chlumsky, Da\u2019Vine Joy Randolph, Gigi Zumbado, Sherry Cola, Michael O\u2019Neill, Sam Huntington, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Bride-Hard-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12740,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12719\/revisions\/12740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}