Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

(2025)

My wife brought Bride Hard home from the public library and I instantly knew I would love it. This is one of those “turn your brain off and enjoy it” comedies and yet it was also surprisingly violent at times!

Rebel Wilson is hilarious and it was great to see her as something other than the butt of fat jokes. I think she gets a bit taken advantage of because she has a sense of humor about it (at least on screen) but when she is given free reign to produce her own brand of comedy, she is really funny.

And she kicks ass in Bride Hard! This starts out kind of like that film 27 Dresses (2008) where the girl is traveling back and forth between two weddings as a double-booked bride’s maid. Except Rebel is going back and forth between a bachelorette party and an espionage operation. Yes, Rebel Wilson is a bad ass spy!

Of course this strains relationships with her fellow bachelorettes and especially the soon to be bride. Rebel is still in the wedding party but gets demoted from maid of honor to just maid. And yet this means she’s aptly placed when terrorists crash the wedding to get at the groom’s family gold. Like I said, you gotta turn your brain off for this one.

The villain is no nonsense. He and his ilk are basically the straight men for the rest of the cast to play humor off of. I don’t mean the terrorists are not gay. I mean they’re the very serious opposite aspect of a comedic collective. Their sexual preferences were never discussed. They very well could be gay. I don’t know.

I felt like there were a lot of red herrings in this film; little misdirections to make you suspicious of one character or another. The presence of a red herring usually implies some surprise or twist. I hope you won’t be mad when I tell you……….spoiler warning, I guess)

……

……

The twist is that there is no twist.

Surprise! You spend the film being suspicious of this person and that person only to find out that the bad guys were the bad guys and the good guys were the good guys, the end. Maybe it was intentional. Maybe Disney has done the secret bad guy to death and this felt fresh. It just seemed like a missed opportunity to make this film slightly more interesting. Heck, I would have appreciated a secret good guy for once! I was even suspicious of that possibility in this film but nope!

Sam Huntington (Jungle 2 Jungle, Detroit Rock City) plays the groom. He has such an innocent look about him, I don’t think I could have accepted him revealing he was a bad guy. He’s interesting though. For someone who started in film so young, he’s had a surprisingly successful film career into adulthood. He seems a very likable fellow.

Probably the most baffling comedy prop we’re meant to take seriously is a non rigid tube with supposedly enough suction power to move gold bullion. This tube had nothing to create suction on either end and was pure movie magic. I know I had turned my brain off but even my brain’s pilot light was like “This is stupid.”

The whole apparatus was only established so Rebel and friend could do a “quickly catch up to the villain in a hilarious way” scene which really wasn’t very hilarious anyway. Even if it was practical, the destination (an ATV at the end of the pipe) seemed like it was only about 50 yards away. They could have just run. Stupid.

Sans that, the film as a whole was pretty enjoyable even if it isn’t the greatest film ever made. I’d definitely be happy to see more Rebel Wilson in starring roles.