Adult-style writing and style notes are employed as Jennifer Lopez poses the enticing query “Do you know the story of Alida and Taroo?” The music inspires one. Suddenly the screen is filled with the illustrations from a storybook, and with the help of such imagery Lopez creates excitement about the Indian story of lovers blazing with passion and desire, depicted as transformed by the gods into a blue hummingbird and a red flower and belonging to two different tribes. Lopez speaks and renders ideas through the screenplay she has written and produced. She greets us with her first album in ten years called ‘This is Me … Now’ which portrays a wonderful love tale ‘This is Me … Now: love story’. It encourages us to believe that a distressed Lopez, who had already married, turned out to be with a real prince in the end. Her husband, Ben Affleck, appears in a light hearted role and even has a SNL-style sketch when he imitates Keith Olbermann laughingly in his 2008 film.
After this introduction, J Lo on the beach is the image we see next. The singer wears a satiny black dress with a high cut and chiffon frills. Seated in front of J. Lo is a man, and they are full of passion as they drive through picturesque mountains. We were first shown an alluring Jennifer Lopez who was terrified as she sat behind the driver who took them across the stunning beach landscape.
That is until the motorcycle crashes, the two separate, and the picture crumbles, leaving Lopez stranded in an apocalyptic steampunk heart factory. Here we have the first of the musical digressions of the film, “Hearts and Flowers,” the song’s cheesy words drunk with Lopez’s corn lament. She states that “Peer in persistent, loving me I managed to pass” she rejoices though working with the factory workers who look like they came from a ‘Metropolis’ directed by Fritz Lang rushing to put the rustic warped shattered heart’s core, which is flower petals, back in order.
Nevertheless, offered Lopez has a lot of auto-tune pop sound which I do not enjoy that much, the lady performs her dancing awesomely and aggressively as always. In a part of “Rebound,” people who live in a glass dwelling place are tethered to each other using colored ribbons all over their bodies. They feel like yo-yos in the choreography, where the stretch of the ribbon hurts like a boomerang returning. The audience is also likely to try out the dance for “Mein Herr” featuring Lopez who brings the raw and emotional kind of choreography.
The movie moves back and forth between dream sequences containing tracks from her latest album, therapy Lopez conducts with her friend Fat Joe, and moments of sheer lunacy with a bunch of stars referred to as the Zodiacal Council (Jane Fonda, Post Malone, Keke Palmer, Jennifer Lewis, Kim Petras, Jay Shetty, Sofia Vergara, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Trevor Noah, and Sadhguru). The former are the ones who represent each star and correspond to one of the zodiac signs. It is funny though that for some reason there is no representation for Aquarius or Capricorn. I’ll leave this one to the astrology girlies out there. The most effective of these sketch comedies are those with Fat Joe who brings with him a sense of calmness and a close working relationship that spans decades. Oscar-nominee Paul Raci also appears in one of the stronger vignettes as a Real Romantics Anonymous group therapist and his regular calmness gets the job done.
Lopez, in conjunction with the lyrics of her songs and film’s footage, integrates the concept of a therapy or a confession regarding the details of her life into her musical works, while also thinking how her films were her intricate forms of self romanticization, in some cases an emotional masochism. Fun and games once again surround Lopez’s three divorces in the visuals for the album’s first single “Can’t Get Enough,” but they also tease at her movie roles, especially in wedding-themed romantic comedies such as “The Wedding Planner,” “Marry Me” and “Shotgun Wedding”. Already a dull speech in which she proclaims her love for the idea of soulmates is cut short by Fat Joe declaring, ‘That’s enough!’ in their therapy session. Then, after another breakup, she is shown singing along to Barbra Streisand’s lines from ‘The Way We Were’ on television. Part of what made her such an alluring romance star was that Lopez herself was a hopeless romantic. She approaches her romantic comedies with grace because she knows how romance strikes and how its fans feel. At no point does she disparage the genre as something poor or unattainable.
“This Is Me … Now: A Love Story” can be classified as both an ego supporting confession and an over the top romantic fantasy.
Time and time again, however, it is dispirited by certain critics of the CGI, coping readers’ abrupt transitions and nonprofessional camera and stage settings. Lopez’s vision is never completely in control of director Meyers’ approach best. In her tribute to Singin’ in the Rain, Lopez succeeds in conveying the emotions experienced by the dancer depicted in the movie’s famous scene, but when Monty Meyers handles the frame to the star, he enlarges difference between the scene’s reality and its idea.
In spite of their technical handicaps, the strength of Lopez should be recognized for exposing those who ruined her in the first place, the wrong decisions made, the insecurity that had to be faced in order to try to be ready for the fairytale ending the slightly superficial one which was fantasized for so long. For some, it may be off-putting to see the national heroine taking all the joy from a happy ending, but after so many storms of tabloid outrage nearly ruining them, Ben and Jen 2.0 deserve their small sunny spot in the world.
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