Like relationships you’re not part of, Jennifer Lopez’s This Is Me … Now: A Love Story is easy to make fun of. That feeling that drives you to text your best friend, “Why is she spamming her Instagram Story with pics of her uggo boyfriend?” will likely be the same one that will have you Googling “Jennifer Lopez’s dating history” immediately after watching the 65-minute long movie-musical.
The arc of the J.Lo dating narrative is long, but it bends toward judgment. Given how many decades she’s been famous, there’s likely nothing you can say about her personal life that we haven’t already heard ad nauseam. She can’t stay single! She can’t keep a guy! She can’t stop collecting husbands like they’re Pokémon! It’s this exact ungenerous prattling that she uses to form the foundation of A Love Story.
Unleashed unto the masses tomorrow via Amazon Prime Video, the fantasy rom-com lets Lopez air out all her romantic dirty laundry with the self-financed finesse of an entertainment-industry titan allegedly worth $400 million. Simply put, the money shows. There is so much—almost too much—packed into just a little over an hour, including intensely choreographed tracks from her ninth studio album, Taíno myths about ancient star-crossed lovers, a Love Addicts Anonymous meeting, a Zodiacal Council cosmically monitoring Lopez’s poor taste in men, a dance scene at a steampunk factory, and Ben Affleck in prosthetics and a wig so blond, it puts his The Duel ’do to shame. Plus the CGI runs amuck, with nearly every frame set in a dreamlike landscape that’s probably not dissimilar from what Mark Zuckerberg thought the Metaverse would eventually look like.
Let’s get this out of the way: I don’t think A Love Story is Lopez’s greatest cinematic achievement, and I don’t think she thinks that, either. (Nothing’s gonna beat Hustlers, anyway.) A Love Story leans into the hyperbolic flair that is common to Broadway shows, and indeed, the musical direction can be a little jarring when it’s not endearing—the closing scene pays homage to Gene Kelly’s iconic Singin’ in the Rain dance. But since Lopez is an avowed lifelong musical-theater fan, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. In general, the movie is grandiose because Lopez operates only on a grand scale. Even so, like anyone who has had the misfortune of being in a toxic relationship or two, she’s still capable of laughing at herself.
Though she plays her character with the same sincerity that made her the most sought-after leading lady of 2000s rom-coms, A Love Story isn’t especially self-serious. The details are pure camp: Members of the Zodiacal Council—including Jane Fonda, Sofía Vergara, Jennifer Lewis, Trevor Noah, Post Malone, and Neil deGrasse Tyson—tsk-tsk at Lopez’s attempts at romantic relationships. Her friend group of millennial copy-and-pastes stage a sex addict intervention. And Fat Joe plays a therapist. Fat Joe plays a therapist!
At times, the silliness is clearly intentional, as if Lopez is side-eyeing the past heartbroken versions of herself with the kind of magnanimous humor you can only develop over time. If your instinct is to laugh at the film, you’re forgiven—it is very funny!—but just know that she is laughing with us.
Who among us delulu girls can say we’ve handled our romantic failures with any more grace than J.Lo? If you’re unlucky enough to have been on the receiving end of back-to-back toxic partnerings, then you know how hard it is, not just dealing with the emotional repercussions but also facing the constant judgment of those around you. For much of my early 20s, I was involved in a humiliating on-and-off relationship with a boy who seemed to believe polyamory was the pinnacle of human innovation. Like a train crash you can’t look away from, it was a disastrous self-made spectacle to my inner circle of closest friends, and it undoubtedly provided endless group-chat fodder for the mutuals who witnessed me posting cryptic Mitski lyrics to my Instagram Story every other day. Love is embarrassing enough on its own—never mind having to navigate the speculative headlines of TMZ and Page Six, too.
In the end, Lopez’s fairy-tale reunion with husband Affleck is the least interesting part of A Love Story. Yes, Affleck’s presence is palpable throughout (and Lopez has admitted multiple times on the press tour that he served as her creative muse). But watching her make a fool of herself in love for over an hour, I barely thought of him—or of A-Rod, or of anyone in her carousel of renowned exes. Instead, I thought of all the boys I had made into mistakes, each one a life lesson the Zodiacal Council would find just as amusing, until I could tell myself “Enough is enough” and actually believe it. I thought about how J.Lo—insanely rich and famous and charismatic mogul though she may be—is kind of just like me.
