Jennifer Lopez’s New Movie Is So Gloriously Weird
There’s a reason that Jennifer Lopez said that “everybody thought [she] was crazy” for making her $20 million musical fantasia/”cinematic odyssey” This Is Me…Now: A Love Story. The film was released on Prime Video on Valentine’s Day, and, now that we’ve seen it we can confirm it was one of the most bizarre and indulgent pop-star vanity projects I can remember watching. That is also why it’s so good—and, in different ways, both a refreshing departure for J. Lo and completely on-brand.
Watching This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is akin to popping a strong dose of melatonin before bed while scrolling through Us Weekly’s Instagram, and then navigating the bonkers dreams that ensue once you fall asleep.
It is a meditation on Lopez’s popular reputation for diving into—and then screwing up—very public relationships, while also, ostensibly, a personal rebuttal to all those outsiders who say that she’s foolish when it comes to love. There are moments when the on-screen character of J. Lo seems to directly address decades of gossip-rag shit-talk about her, articulating on her own terms how it’s felt to weather partnerships that don’t work out and the judgment that follows. These are the moments that bring back down to Earth a semi-autobiographical film that, at several points, literally takes place in the cosmos.