A month ago, the trailer of Jennifer Lopez’s new film This Is Me … Now: A Love Story—a companion to her ninth studio album This Is Me … Now—made waves on social media and in group chats everywhere. It wasn’t necessarily because the trailer was good or bad, but because it was downright baffling. Was it supposed to be a biopic? A visual album? A fantasy steampunk film complete with a gigantic exploding metal heart? Whatever it was, it was most definitely a gamble for Lopez, who shelled out $20 million from her own wallet to make a project that apparently had even her close circle of friends and family questioning her sanity. Now, as of Friday, the hourlong project and album are finally here on Amazon Prime Video, with a documentary about the making of the movie and album, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, coming on Feb. 27. After having watched J.Lo’s film … thing, I still can’t answer the many questions brought on by the trailer, but I am delighted to report that it’s an absurd, chaotic, indefinable mess. I loved it.
For being just an hour long, This Is Me … Now: A Love Story covers a lot of ground. It starts with a Puerto Rican folk tale about star-crossed lovers, a frame for Lopez’s own love story (the biopic part of the project). She undergoes a heartbreak so big—a not-so-thinly-veiled allusion to her first go-round with her now-husband Ben Affleck—that she has dreams of working in a steampunk heart factory, cultivating special flowers that sustain her metal heart, until the flowers begin to die and the heart nearly explodes. OK! Outside the dream, the “real” Lopez (what is reality?) is an astrology-touting serial monogamist who has been collecting failed relationships and marriage proposals like infinity stones. I’m sure it won’t surprise you to learn that by the end, she finds herself and finds true love again in Affleck. Art imitating life!
A folk tale, a steampunk dream sequence set to her new song (and good choreography)—sure! But that’s all before you throw in the varying large set pieces throughout the film: the big wedding number in which Lopez switches between three partners, representing her three husbands before Affleck; the scene inspired by Singin’ in the Rain; the nod to experiencing abuse, as expressed through a choreographed duet, staged in a glass house that comes crashing down while she’s tethered by a rope to her partner. Then there’s the random but impressive cast list, which boasts big names ranging from Trevor Noah and Keke Palmer to Neil deGrasse Tyson and Isha Foundation founder Sadhguru. Most of these bigger names make up what Variety calls Lopez’s “Zodiac love council,” an apt description of a campy concept for which J.Lo reached deep into her Rolodex to get some of her famous friends to cosplay as representatives of the zodiac signs. These zodiac personifications—Palmer as Scorpio, Tyson as Taurus, etc.—literally watch over Lopez from their Gothic-looking heavenly chamber as the singer-actor continuously makes poor relationship decisions. Meanwhile, rapper Fat Joe hilariously plays Lopez’s therapist, Affleck dons tons of prosthetics to portray a withered sensationalist TV news commentator, and there’s a musical number set in a Love Addicts Anonymous group session for which the facilitator is celebrated character actor Paul Raci.
If all of that sounds unhinged, it’s because it is. This Is Me … Now: A Love Story, a vanity project of the highest order, is some of the biggest celebrity nonsense I have witnessed in a long time—and that’s a good thing. For one, Lopez is single-handedly giving astrology girls, who have been mocked as silly, duped fools, some much-needed high-profile support. The entire zodiac love council is one of the best parts, because I’m sure we’ve all wondered what would happen if we got Post Malone, Sadhguru, Jenifer Lewis, and Sofia Vergara in a room together.
Moreover, it is genuinely exciting to see an A-lister in the pursuit of pure, honest, sincere cringe. Yes, the movie is something of a mess, but it’s a fun mess, entertaining in both ironic and earnest ways. I unabashedly love that, in an age when celebrity image is so fiercely guarded and airbrushed, one of the biggest stars alive is unafraid to make something that carries the potential of being entirely unintelligible to others. If you’re J.Lo, why not make a biopic fantastical visual album musical experience steeped in astrology? And with $20 million on the line? That is, in a word, iconic.
I’d go so far as to say that more celebrities should be doing this kind of thing. I would much rather have a star who, in the later stages of their career, decided to pour their own millions into chasing senseless passion projects than one who takes herself too seriously and tortures us all with a three-hour prestige period film for which she went “method” in the hopes of finally attaining that Oscar. That’s not to mention the countless celebrities developing skin-care or makeup lines they have no business making, or releasing a fragrance that is bound for the clearance section at T.J. Maxx, or, even worse, trying to make their way into politics. There’s a lack of pretentiousness about J.Lo’s project that is respectful not only of the audience’s time, but of its dwindling tolerance for tired attempts at auteurship, this constant push to “elevate” a concept, a story, or a piece of culture. If, in my 50s, I looked like J.Lo does, and if I had the money that J.Lo has, you can bet I would be spending my time and resources making nonsensical stuff too. Celebs, take notes from Jenny From the Block: Make the silly thing, the fun thing, the thing that liberates you, instead of the thing that you think other people want.
