No disrespect to JLo intended, but Jennifer Coolidge is absolutely the best part of Shotgun Wedding. And the new action-comedy, which began streaming on Amazon Prime Video today, blessed audiences with an image I think we’ve all been waiting for: Jennifer Coolidge with a freakin’ machine gun. I know we’re only 27 days into 2023, but it’s been a hard year. And honestly? We deserve this.
Directed by Jason Moore, with a screenplay by Mark Hammer, Shotgun Wedding stars Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel as a soon-to-be-married couple whose destination wedding in the Philippines is held hostage by pirates. The bride and groom, Darcy and Tom, manage to escape, but the rest of the wedding party is held at gunpoint in the resort’s fancy infinity pool. And that includes Tom’s dorky, well-meaning Midwestern mom, Carol, played by the one and only Jennifer Coolidge.
Coolidge is, as you might expect, the most hilarious kidnap-ee ever. When the scary, masked man with a gun calls the name of the bride’s rich father, she helpfully points out, “Robert, they’re asking for you.” When a pirate pins name tags to each hostage, she sweetly requests to have hers stapled in the middle of her dress, not to the side. And when Darcy and Tom decide to stage their wedding in the middle of this hostage situation—in an elaborate plan to escape—she belts out Edwin McCain’s 1997 hit, “I’ll Be.” Basically, she steals every scene that she’s in.
But the absolute best scene in the film comes shortly after that rousing rendition of “I’ll Be,” when the wedding party manages to turn the tides on the pirates and gain control of the situation. Lopez threatens the bad guys with a grenade, and one of the kidnappers drops his gun and bolts. Coolidge sees her opportunity. She snatches the weapon, and then she gets her Molly Weasely moment.
“Nobody fucks with my family!” she screams, and then just absolutely unloads a downpour of bullets, fire round after round of the automatic weapon. Is it, logically, the best idea to open fire on a crowd that consists mostly of your family and friends? Probably not, but who cares! It’s Jennifer Coolidge screaming and firing a machine gun like she’s the freakin’ Terminator!
God bless director Jason Moore and writer Mark Hammer, who recognized the golden opportunity they had by putting Jennifer Coolidge in an action movie, and did not let that opportunity pass them by. And god bless Coolidge herself, who handles that machine gun like she’s an ex-Marine. Get Paul Feig on the phone, because we’ve found the perfect actor to star alongside Melissa McCarthy in Spy 2.
Now, who do I have to speak to about giving Jennifer Coolidge a sword?
