Bride-along
I just realized I haven’t made a real lapse of logic shitsandwich in a few weeks, so here is my attempt at eye-rolls.
Bride-along stars Sandra Bullock in a role curiously similar to that of her character in Miss Congeniality. She’s a no nonsense detective named Grace who is engaged to be married to her longtime sweetheart, Ben played by Owen Wilson. Grace is a total alpha woman and super tough, while Ben is a really laid back, “Californian” elementary schoolteacher. They are pretty much opposites, but they make it work. The opening credits of the film show the formative years of their relationship and all of the comic instances where Grace is super tough and Ben is a complete laid back, but also pussy about stuff. As the montage scenes play on and Grace is a detective, it’s easy to notice that Ben wants commitment from her, and one day she eventually asks him to marry her.
The movie begins in earnest with Grace and Ben planning the last few touches of the wedding. Ben is super into it, and Grace is less so as she has been close to solving a big murder in LA or something. Her police captain Sikorski, played by J.K. Simmons calls her and asks if she’s with that “fruit” or something offensive, and she says she’s planning their wedding and cant leave. Sikorski tells her that he needs her to stakeout the latest lead for where the crime syndicate headed by Fat Sally, has set up their operation. Fat Sally is obviously played by Dennis Farina. Grace is about to go, but then Ben reminds her that their rehearsal dinner is tomorrow and she promised she would leave the cop stuff on the back-burner. Grace agrees, and doesn’t go.
Later that night Sally’s men, kill a key witness in some trial that they might be implicated in and the only witness left is a wise-cracking street kid named Jay played by Bobb’e J Thompson. Sikorski guilts Grace the next day by saying she used to be the best cop on the force but she’s gotten soft because of Ben, and now a child might die. She tells him she’ll take care of the situation. Ben and Grace have a talk and even though the rehearsal dinner is the next day and Grace promised to be there, she asks if Ben if she can bring Jay home to stay with them until the trial. Ben agrees because he taught Jay years ago, but he still worries it might derail their plans. So obviously it has to.
Jay enters their life and turns things upside-down. He is a teenage pest and says a lot of wise cracky things that make white people laugh. The night of the rehearsal dinner, Jay runs off. Grace thinks he’s going to come back, but after a few hours, he hasn’t turned up. Ben warns her (tho it makes no sense for his character) if she leaves to go after him, theres no way she’ll make it to the wedding in time because something always derails her. She decides she can’t let a kid be killed by Fat Sally and his goons so she leaves, but before that she grabs her gown and all the bridal shit she’ll need.
Jay gets captured in the next scene by Mooch, the stereotypically fat, dumb italian goon, played by Steven Schrippa, and is tied up in some warehouse. Grace, using all her detective know-how figures that Jay’s likely been captured and is probably holed up in one of Sally’s Ice Factories? Sure, Ice Factory. She goes to each one until she finds Jay early in the morning the day of her wedding. She can’t just go in and grab him because they’ll know it’s her and kill her, so she sneaks around beating up italian goons one by one, until she gets to Jay’s room. She sneaks in, unties Jay, and tells him to watch the door. He asks why, and she says cause she’s got a wedding to go to. She puts on her gown and ties up her hair, but puts like holsters everywhere and it’s supposed to be funny. Then right as Jay notices Mooch coming they Grace runs out shooting double guns, murdering everyone but Mooch. She gets outside and her and Jay start driving away.
Basically the set up here is to have a crazy car chase throughout San Francisco with Grace wearing her dress, and Ben at the altar wondering if she’ll make it in time. The goons eventually chase Grace and Jay to the chapel outside and Grace and Jay jump out and hide behind another car. Fat Sally emerges from one of the cars. At this point theres a ton of commotion and the wedding party comes outside. They see Grace and Jay hiding behind cars and right as Fat Sally closes in on them, Grace gets up and puts her guns down. She tells him to take her. Not the boy (which makes no sense). He says how about he takes them both, and right as he’s about to shoot them, Grace pulls a gun from her garter and shoots Sally, killing him. Mooch and the others drive off. Grace cool as a cucumber asks Jay if he has the rings, and they go inside, 10 mins late, but close enough. They marry. YAY!
The next scene is Sikorski mentioning how she and Jay made a good team, and when Jay turns 18 he decides he’ll join the force too, under Grace’s tutelage, but in the meantime he’ll start taking school seriously and join and after school program or something for being a cop *(mind you he just saw mad dudes get murdered). Ben eventually learns that Grace is the best there is at what she does, and accepts that sometimes she’ll have to save lives and crap.
Movie Over.
Tons of sequel potential.