Jennifer Lopez’s Marry Me is still Jenny From The Block. That celebrity backstory makes this sugary rom-com all the more sweet.
If anyone’s done the method research for a movie about a celebrity marriage designed to satiate salivating fans, surely it’s Jennifer Lopez. It’s difficult, and perhaps unnecessary, to discard her very public persona from her screen and stage appearances, which is something her new movie Marry Me cleverly plays into.
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Self-made superstar Kat Valdez (Lopez) is a pop star about to launch her “Marry Me Tour”, in which she’ll wed her equally famous and raunchily handsome partner Bastian (no, not Ben Affleck: fellow popstar Maluma). The preternaturally youthful Lopez is all aglow in her wedding finery backstage when she discovers the gut-punch news that her husband has been filmed canoodling with her assistant.
“I’m told that 20 million people are supposed to watch us take our vows,” she announces tearily from the stage. Then, in the ultimate rebound power move, she sets her gaze upon the unwitting Charlie (Owen Wilson), who is holding his daughter’s placard reading “Marry Me” in honour of the tour title. “Why not? Yes!” announces Valdez.
The next two hours is glossy and glitzy on the surface, and within it’s as soft and fluffy as a muffin. There’s plenty of reasons to invest your time and appetite into Lopez’s romantic pop fairytale: here’s three.
“Marry Me” Celebrates the Charismatic Equality of J. Lo and Owen Wilson
If the rise of streaming diminishes the power of movie-star charisma, what risks being lost is put on joyful display in the new, throwback-style romantic comedy “Marry Me.” Its two legacy stars, Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, made their fame in a big-screen age, and, in the current environment of I.P.-driven blockbusters, they come off as virtual revenants from the age of old-school Hollywood glamour. What’s more, the movie’s story is a clever twist on the very notion of stardom. “Marry Me,” directed by Kat Coiro, does more than celebrate its lead actors; it suggests the meaning, the substance, that’s built into their cinematic celebrity.
J. Lo plays Kat Valdez, an international pop-music star who has made her romantic life the center of her work. She’s engaged to marry Bastian (Maluma), another pop sensation; her new song, “Marry Me,” is the hit of the moment, and she’ll crown its success by marrying Bastian onstage during an upcoming New York concert. The event is a dominant, fabricated phenomenon, the center of TV talk shows and entertainment journalism, and one man ignores it all: Charlie Gilbert (Wilson), a devoted math teacher in a Brooklyn middle school and a recent divorcé with a twelve-year-old daughter, Lou (Chloe Coleman). Charlie is disconnected from social media and unaware of who’s in and who’s out among celebrities. But Charlie’s friend and colleague Parker (Sarah Silverman), a guidance counsellor, is tuned in, and, with three tickets in hand and two of them going unused, she invites Charlie and Lou to join her at the concert.
Just before showtime, drama ensues: a video surfaces which shows that Bastian is having an affair with one of Kat’s assistants. Kat’s staff (including her devoted manager, Colin, played by the deft and understated John Bradley, who’s also one of the three leads in “Moonfall”) and the whole audience find out before she does. She takes the stage in a state of emotional shock, stops the music, and speaks of her bitter disillusionment. Parker, a big fan, has come equipped with a hand-drawn sign that says “Marry Me”; to take a cellphone video, she hands the sign to Charlie—and when Kat sees it, she says yes, calls Charlie to the stage, and marries him, a perfect stranger in dad pants and a windbreaker, in the glitzy and grandiose ceremony that was meant for her and Bastian. (Yes, he has misgivings, but he is caught up in the moment, urged on by Parker, Lou, and the whole chanting crowd.)