Genre: Comedy/Action
Premise: A secret CIA spy must save the day when her best friend’s destination wedding is infiltrated by terrorists planning to break into the rich fiancé’s vault and steal all his money.
About: This project will star Rebel Wilson. It will be directed by Simon West. The script comes from Shaina Steinberg. Steinberg has been at this for a while. She has a couple of produced credits from 2011, writing two episodes of the TV show, “Chase.”
Writer: Shaina Steinberg (story by Shaina & Cece Pleasants)
Details: 110 pages
I love these callback concepts to the giant spec sale days. This is the kind of script that would’ve sold for a million dollars back in 1998. It actually reminds me of the famous spec sale, “Monster-In-Law,” which, literally, sold on the title alone.
That’s pure spec script DNA right there, when you can sell a script off its title. It’s also something you can’t do anymore. I mean, yeah, this movie is getting made. But I don’t think it came together as a spec sale.
Sam and Betsy have been best friends since they were children. And both of them have difficult home lives so they promise each other never to get married.
Cut to 20 years later and Betsy is in Barcelona with Sam and several other girls for Betsy’s bachelorette party. Betsy is marrying a really rich guy so the wedding is going to be extravagant.
However, it turns out Sam, who’s now secretly a CIA agent, has a mission here in Spain and her team is able to take down a big terrorist. This means that Sam misses some bachelorette party activities and Betsy is so upset about it that she hands the title of Maid of Honor over to the snobby Vanessa, who accepts it with it a Cruella-like smile.
Although Sam is booted from the wedding, which is taking place on a private island in Malta two weeks later, she shows up anyway. No one seems to be enthusiastic about her presence. They assume she’ll disappear like she always does right when Betsy needs her.
But then, on the first night, some gnarly looking terrorists (or thieves?) swim onto shore and bust into the mansion everybody’s staying at, the family home of Betsy’s rich fiancé. They know about the secret vault in the house that contains millions of dollars and they begin their plan of breaking into it while holding all the wedding guests hostage.
Meanwhile, Sam happens to be off in some back room when this is happening, allowing her to morph into her kick-butt spy persona. From there, it’s off to the races, disposing of these terrorists one by one, until she can get to the big fat baddie, Kurt, and take him out, thus saving the day, as well as her friendship with Betsy.
I don’t know how funny this script is. But it makes up for any of its non-funniness by being such a fun film.
The setup is strong, mainly because of the central relationship, which is more complex than it looks like at first glance.
Normally, you have basic reasons why two friends aren’t friends anymore. Somebody got upset about something a while back and they never talked about it and, therefore, the two friends drifted apart. Or someone’s jealous of someone else, which was the case in Bridesmaids.
Here, Betsy is upset with Sam because Sam is never around when she needs her. We see this right from the start, when she misses an important gathering with all the bridesmaids.
But the reason Sam isn’t around is because she’s a CIA agent and literally trying to save the world. So it’s technically not Sam’s fault that she isn’t around. And because Sam can’t tell Betsy the real reason why she’s absent, their friendship fractures.
I like these complex reasons for broken relationships. There’s more to it, which gets the reader thinking. We’re frustrated cause we wish Betsy could understand that Sam isn’t doing this on purpose. And we’re mad because there’s no way for her to tell her.
Then, when the big terrorists takeover happens, you get the intersection of these two worlds that then exploit this unique relationship issue. Sam gets to utilize the skills of the very job that’s keeping her from Betsy to save her life.
And it’s all done in a package that feels like a fresh reinvention of Die Hard.
I’m actually surprised nobody’s come up with this idea before. Scott? This feels like it’s right up your alley. Of course, maybe people have thought of it, but the script never moved through the system like this one did.
The script’s only weak point is that it’s not funny enough. The only character who gets laughs is Vanessa. She’s so deliciously cruel that we love to watch her operate.
But these other characters aren’t funny. The pregnant character. The slutty character. I’m not saying that these archetypes can’t be funny. But what a lot of writers will do is they’ll include these character types that are funny *in theory,* but then they don’t do the work to actually make them funny.
A character like Alan in The Hangover isn’t just funny because he’s wacky. You can’t just throw a character like him into the mix and the laughs come. You have to think these characters through and understand WHY they’re funny. Where they came from. And how that shapes their comedy.
I tell writers this all the time. You want to know a chracter as specifically as possible. That’s why you do all that annoying stuff like write down a 5 page backstory about your character. Cause the more you know about that person and the life they lived, the more formed they will come off on the page. And if it’s a comedy, I promise you it’ll be easier to find the laughs from them.
And then there just weren’t any clever funny set pieces. There was some entertaining action. But where is the show-stopper laugh-out-loud set piece in Bride Hard? Die Hard is famous for all its cool set piece moments. If you’re going to use that template, your job is to write a bunch of funny action set pieces. That part of the script just wasn’t there, though. Not enough, at least.
Finally, I would’ve liked to feel more fear here. I never, for a second, felt like the guests were in real danger. The bad guys aren’t that bad. The one guest who gets shot – the husband-to-be – it happens as an accident. The bad guys just want their money and for these annoying wedding guests to shut up while they get it.
I understand that it’s tricky with comedy. If you go too over the top with danger, it’s not funny anymore. But if it doesn’t feel like there’s any danger at all, we’re not really invested in the story. Remember that laughing is a release of tension. Where does that tension come from? It comes from the fear that these terrorists are going to kill these people. If that’s not there, there’s no tension to release. Which means no laughs.
Despite that, this is worth a read. It’s one of those situations where the concept is too good to screw up. Which is a great reminder of how important concept is. It does a massive amount of the work for you.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: To make any relationship interesting, introduce a problematic element that’s hurting that relationship and that one of the characters CANNOT TELL THE OTHER CHARACTER about under any circumstances. In this case, it’s that Sam is a spy. But it could be anything. This secret creates a compelling dynamic because the audience is always frustrated by the fact that, if this piece of information was known, the friends, or the couple, would immediately resolve their issues. Because that’s not an option, the reader becomes even more invested cause they want to see how this unresolvable situation is going to be resolved.
