Jennifer Lopez is no stranger to telling love stories, and with This is Me… Now: A Love Story, she’s ready to tell her own. It’s not so much an autobiography as it is an interpretive documentary with more oomph and stature than the recent Seeking Mavis Beacon.
[Warning: spoilers from Jennifer Lopez’s This is Me… Now: A Love Story are below!]
The essence of Jennifer Lopez’s This is Me… Now: A Love Story
This is Me… Now: A Love Story is self-indulgent, but it is also self-aware. With three marriages and countless relationships, Jennifer Lopez is no stranger to commentary on her love life. This visual album masquerading as a movie is a grand exploration of that. After selling 80 million records, having billions of streams, and then acting success in Hollywood, Jennifer Lopez has earned the right to do whatever she wants.
The cast of this movie is A-List and full of stars that are very clearly her friends, but that’s not a knock on the artist. If any of us had the means and the motivation, we’d probably put all our friends in a big production, too.
But back to This is Me… Now: A Love Story. It’s difficult to pin down a throughline for what is happening in this film. The main character is Jennifer Lopez as Jennifer Lopez. Okay, technically, her character is “The Artist,” but a rose by any other name is still a rose, at least according to William Shakespeare.
The story is framed as such that Jennifer Lopez is also Alida, the hopeless romantic from the Puerto Rican love story of Alida and Taroo. Director Dave Myers only lightly anchors The Artist’s journey to this love legend. The moments with bursts of red and the hummingbirds symbolizing the story are balanced. This is not a 1:1.
Through the film, we jump through fanciful vignettes of Lopez’s life from moments as a child and the kind of love, both self and external, she was lacking in her adult relationships. (Would it really be a Jennifer Lopez autobiography if there weren’t some links to “Jenny From the Block”?)
This is Me… Now: A Love Story is not so much an indictment against being a hopeless romantic as it is a genre-bending argument for it. It’s love’s failures tied up along with love’s triumphs. We see everything she has gone through as a person, including friend interventions, being done wrong, and more, yet The Artist still believes in the power of love. Fat Joe is The Artist’s therapist, as we recall dreams and moments that haunt her being.
Astrology and other glimpses in JLo’s journey of love in This is Me… Now
Astrology, the cosmic undercurrents of the world, and fate are all important totems in This Is Me… Now: A Love Story. Taking a page from Rex Stone’s (Ben Affleck) cable news commentary on “The Truth,” this film skims the surface of deeper questions about our own individual romantic self-determination.
Do we actually have a hand in our own destiny, and are we susceptible to friend interventions and the physical machinations of the Heart Factory, or is it all some grand plan by the Zodiacal Council that we’re just living out? There is a message behind this visual album, and it’s more than just we’re living out our lives with Jane Fonda and Neil DeGrasse Tyson at the helm.
Beyond music, This is Me… Now: A Love Story offers us glimpses of what could be in the movie-going future. Let me be clear: This isn’t a bad thing, and I’m not talking about a Scrooge and Ghost of Christmas Future moment. Jennifer Lopez is a charming and ridiculously hard-working actress. Outside of music, she’s one of the modern queens of down-to-earth romantic comedy with things like Maid in Manhattan and The Wedding Planner. But the visuals in this movie make it clear she could be a pretty kick-ass drama star, too. This movie is the definition of manifesting something for yourself: it’s a grand audition or self-tape.
Netflix’s The Mother gave us a glimpse of Lopez’s action prowess last year, but the short bursts of science-fiction and old-school musicals make me really want to see her in those mediums. The opening video with the Heart Factory was a science fiction and steampunk showstopper that made me think of Apple TV+’s Silo with Rebecca Ferguson. (The dancing with stop-motion-like controlled erratics was pretty incredible, too!) This is a sizzle reel of her dramatic range, and it works.
Beyond that, there’s another sequence in the film that plays homage to Singing in the Rain. But instead of Gene Kelly with an umbrella tapping (or Tom Holland, if you’ve watched that video from Lip Sync Battle), J-Lo brings her own twist to it. And it’s good. You could make the argument that the rom-com Marry Me is a musical, as she plays (again) a famous singer in love who well sings, but it’s not the same as a Wonka or The Color Purple. My conclusion from this film is that the world needs a grand Jennifer Lopez musical love story immediately.
But ultimately, unless you’re a hardcore JLo fan, This is Me… Now: A Love Story may not appeal to you because it lacks a lot of drama. Although the visuals are certainly engaging, the narrative veers more into art-house territory. It’s not a traditional popcorn film or a concert-going experience like Taylor Swift: The Eras tour, but it is worth checking out once.
This is Me…Now: A Love Story is now streaming on Prime Video. Do you plan on watching JLo’s new movie? Let us know on social media @mycosmiccircus or in The Cosmic Circus Discord!
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