'Shotgun Wedding' fires blanks

 

There are silly movies and then there are really silly movies. Shotgun Wedding fits into the latter category — and I don’t mean that in a good way.  A destination wedding romcom, Shotgun Wedding stars  Jennifer Lopez. An able comic actress, Lopez gives the movie her all but like her unfortunate cohorts, she's burdened by a preposterous story line that generates as many groans as laughs. Director Jason Moore guides J.Lo and Josh Duhamel (the story's groom) through scenes in which  ransom-seeking pirates invade the wedding and hold the guests hostage. Additional cast includes Cheech Marin as the wealthy father of Lopez's Darcy and Lenny Kravitz as Darcy's smooth-talking ex. Sonia Braga has a brief turn as Darcy's mother and Jennifer Coolidge  appears as the comically brash mother of the groom. Add some late picture stunts that wobble their way into action/comedy turf and you've got ... well ... a romcom with grenades and explosions. A lame screenplay, set at a Filipino resort,  forces the cast to try too hard  for laughs. Let me clarify. I called this a really silly movie. In fairness, I should say that Shotgun Wedding isn't trying to be an exercise in high wit. Still, it's difficult to say "I do" to a wedding comedy that's married to so many ill-conceived gags.

JLo as a superstar who finds love

   At one point in Jennifer Lopez’s rom-com, Marry Me, Lopez’s character — a singing sensation named Kat Valdez — tells her audience that love is nothing more than a fairy tale. 

   Poor Kat. She’s flustered because Bastian (Columbian singer Maluma) her equally famous fiancee has been unfaithful to her, news Kat learns moments before the two are scheduled to be married in a grand ceremony during a concert at Madison Square Garden.

  So, yes, weep for Kat. What she thought would be the best of her several previous marriages has gone up in flames.

  There isn't much irony in saying that Marry Me — the title is taken from a hit song that Bastian and Kat have recorded together — qualifies as its own lavish fairy tale complete with musical numbers, product placements (Coach and Guess, among them), and an unashamed commitment to formula.

   Shaken emotionally, Kat decides — during the concert — to marry a stranger, a divorced Brooklyn-based math teacher (Owen Wilson) who’s attending the concert with his teenage daughter (Chloe Coleman) and his school’s gay guidance counselor (Sarah Silverman), the woman who procured the tickets and provides what there is of the movie's comic relief.

    Wilson’s baffled Charlie heads to the stage and the two marry. It’s not supposed to last. It's Kat's impulsive attempt to demonstrate how hollow marriage really is, not to mention a slam at the self-impressed Bastian.

   So that’s the formula: Two unlikely characters are united in a sham marriage. They gradually get to know each other and, here's a shock, they fall in love. 

  A last-minute change of heart by Charlie serves as the third-act obstacle that must be overcome before the couple is reunited —at a math competition in the midwest no less.

   Wilson does his best to create a human-scaled character but the movie makes no bones about being a star vehicle for Lopez — bold, glossy, and operating in a sphere beyond ridiculous, a place where a major star visits a junior high school classroom and charms the students in Charlie’s math club.

   See, Kat really is a down-to-earth human being

   If audiences weren’t willing to accept ridiculous fantasy, a whole lot of movies never would have been made.

    That means there’s an audience for Marry Me and, say this, Lopez doesn’t shortchange the audience when it comes to musical numbers. One involves female dancers dressed (sort of) as nuns and  male dancers with turned-around collars.

     Such moments may be overproduced but Lopez knows how to sell a song even as she splashes her way through what may turn out to be the silliest, most shallow rom-com of the year. 

    

Jennifer Lopez dominates ‘Hustlers’

Flashy surfaces and energized performances keep this look at pole dancers on track — but it’s a narrow track.

Jennifer Lopez headlines Hustlers, an inside look at the world of pole dancers — in this case, pole dancers who scam Wall Street hotshots who wantonly spend money on booze, ego-indulgence and lap dances.

Director Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler) includes enough pole dancing and body exposure to keep the movie solidly in R-rated territory as she tells a story that revolves around the developing friendship between Lopez’s Romona and a fledgling dancer who goes by the name Destiny (Constance Wu).

Early on, Romona takes an eager-to-learn Destiny underwing, teaches her the rules of the pole, and offers to partner with her. When two women offer lap dances to drunken finance guys in the private rooms of clubs, the work proves more lucrative (and probably safer) than solo efforts.

Much of the movie consists of energetic sequences that gleefully chronicle the economic ascent of the two women. We also learn a little about each woman. Romona has a daughter. Destiny supports an aging grandmother who doesn’t offer much resistance when presented with thick wads of cash.

Mimicking the rush of a downed shot of vodka and buoyed by the abandon of the big-ticket shopping sprees in which the women indulge, Hustlers wastes no time getting down to business, drama on speed-dial. Written by Scafaria and inspired by a magazine article by Jessica Pressler, the screenplay races across a familiar dramatic arc.

In this case, the intoxications of the movie's early scenes receive sober comeuppance in 2008 when the market collapses. As stocks sink, so do the fortunes of the night clubs and strippers who have become part of the lower Manhattan scene.

After a few unsuccessful attempts to land day jobs, Romana and Destiny strike out on their own, pursuing an activity they call “fishing.”

They lure prosperous businessmen into nights of clubbing, drug their drinks with a combination of Ketamine and MDMA, and pretend to keep pace. The women then proceed to relieve the mark of his credit cards. Said cards get pushed to their limit. Romona and Destiny earn big bucks while ensuring that the clubs and any assistants receive their cuts.

It all seems too good to be true, crime with a safety net. These supposedly savvy sharks aren’t likely to admit they’ve been fleeced out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in their pursuit of a good time.

Lili Reinhart and Keke Palmer play strippers who join Romona and Destiny in their felonious enterprise. Neither character is especially well-developed but the movie gives them each comic moments. Reinhart's Annabelle, for example, tends to throw up under stress; i.e., at the worst possible moments.

I’m not sure that it adds much, but the movie employs a framing device. Destiny narrates the story as she’s being interviewed by a journalist (Julia Stiles) who plans to write a magazine article about how the women raked in money, did a fair amount of high living and ultimately got caught. The bond between them eventually eroded.

It’s worth noting that Hustlers adopts the women’s point of view in depicting men, nearly all of whom seem to be class-A jerks who deserve what they get. Many are married men who lord it over the lap dancers, often throwing money at them in a demeaning fashion. Hustlers is a movie about women -- not about the men who think they're entitled to exploit them.

I wasn’t looking at my watch, but my impression was that Wu receives more screen time than Lopez. If so, there's still no question that Lopez is the movie’s star. Her Romona exudes confidence and entrepreneurial savvy. When she teaches Destiny how to pole dance, you can tell that, no matter what anyone thinks, Romona controls her body. Smart enough to use her physicality to dominate any situation, Romona remains unscathed by her line of work. She's a force.

The women are motivated by a simple equation: Economic self-sufficiency equals freedom. So what if what they do is illegal? The whole country’s nothing more than a rigged game anyway. Why shouldn't they get their share?

Although deeply embedded in the fabric of the movie, this simplistically cynical ethos never seems entirely convincing. To paraphrase Romona: Some people have the money; others dance for it. Pole dancing as a metaphor for the way society works? I didn't buy it.

Full of flash and performance verve, Hustlers nonetheless remains a showcase for Lopez -- with entertaining cameo help from rappers Cardi B and Lizzo. I don't what it has to do with anything, but it seems worth noting: Cardi B's Bronx accent is thick enough to strip the pretension off just about anything.

'Boy Next Door:' a bad movie neighbor

Jennifer Lopez plays a character who teaches the classics and falls prey to a stalker.

The Boy Next Door qualifies as the year's first genuine addition to the cinematic junk pile, a thriller that's not only ludicrous, but proves an embarrassment for Jennifer Lopez, its star.

Lopez plays Claire Peterson, a woman whose marriage is foundering. Claire evidently isn't stricken by shyness; she's dressed to put her body on display even when she's just hanging around the house.

Not surprisingly, Claire attracts the attention of Noah Sandborn (Ryan Guzman), a high-school senior who's new to the neighborhood and who's taking care of a sick uncle who happens to be Claire's next door neighbor.

It doesn't seem to have bothered anyone that Guzman is 27, and looks it. He's a classmate of Claire's teen-age son (Ian Nelson), a kid who actually looks like he might still be in high school.

You may want to think of Noah as a psychotic version of Eddie Haskell of Leave It to Beaver fame. At first, he's incredibly helpful to Claire, who's trying to get by without the presence of her estranged husband (John Corbett).

Corbett's character knows he made a mistake by cheating on his wife. He wants to return home. Not so fast, says a wary Claire.

In a moment of desperation and horniness, Claire sleeps with Noah, who immediately develops an obsession with her. The filmmakers do everything they can to give the scene some soft-core gloss. All that's missing is a label: MAJOR SEX SCENE IN PROGRESS.

Did I mention that Claire is a high school teacher who specializes in the classics and that Noah worms his way into the class so that he can cement his relationship with Claire and show off his mastery of Homer?

Once Claire comes to her senses, she wants nothing more to do with Noah, but he won't take "no" for an answer. He reveals himself as a manipulative and ultimately violent stalker who threatens to ruin Claire's life.

Eventually, Claire turns for help to her BFF, the schools vice principal played by Kristin Chenoweth.

All of this builds toward a violent showdown that's so preposterously gruesome, it provoked a few laughs at a preview screening.

Despite the addition of a wafer-thin psychological explanation for Noah's behavior, The Boy Next Door offers little by way of big-screen pleasure -- unless you want to ogle Lopez or the hunky Guzman.

The Boy Next Door may be trying to be an over-the-top thriller, but it winds up scraping the bottom of the big-screen barrel.