Dir: Kat Coiro. Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Maluma, Sarah Silverman, Chloe Coleman, John Bradley. 12A, 112 mins.
There’s always been a Jennifer Lopez disconnect. In reality, Lopez is a diva extraordinaire, a fabulously wealthy, one-woman entertainment ecosystem. On film, Lopez is the perennial working-class striver: a wedding planner, a maid in Manhattan, a retail worker waiting for life’s second act. Coupled with many of her pop anthems – “I’m Real”, “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” – she has repeatedly used her work to distance herself from the persona she’s otherwise cultivated. Marry Me, her latest attempt to resuscitate the romcom, makes literal that strange contradiction. It revolves around a pop superstar trapped in a glass cage of fame and fortune, and the vulnerable, ordinary woman crying out for love underneath. It could have been called “JLo: The Movie”.
