Marry Me

‘I’ve never been nominated for anything,’ moans Jennifer Lopez’s character in Marry Me, a movie in which she plays Kat Valdez, a popular singer with a string of marriages behind her. It’s not a massive stretch for Lopez; the role has clearly been created to suit her on-going public persona, but her work is unlikely to trouble the Academy. Fortunately, there’s a number of other elements to play with here, notably matching her with her co-star from the modern classic that is Anaconda, Owen Wilson, and an inevitable dash of literary pretention in two discussions of the work of poet John Keats.

Based on a graphic novel, Marry Me is as contrived as any rom-com to date; try and follow this scenario. Valdez is live-streaming her own on-stage wedding to fellow singer and obvious bad egg Bastain (singer Maluma), but he’s been seeing other girls, information that breaks to Valdez while she’s in mid costume change before the vows. Tearful and emotional, she decides that since many of the crowd are carrying placards that say Marry Me, the title of her new song, she’ll instead marry the first man she randomly picks out of the crowd. That man happens to be single dad Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson) who isn’t a fan of Valdez but has been persuaded to attend to please his twelve year old daughter, who fears her dad isn’t any fun anymore. Gilbert accepts Valdez’ spontaneous proposal, but while the twitterati go mental on their Ista-tiktoks, Valdez’ management decide to lean into her moment of madness, and hype the couple as an item. Yet in the process, fate provides an obvious twist as the faux-lovers begin to fall in love for real…

For reasons too personal to go into on a public forum, I’ve decided to watch pretty much everything Lopez does cinematically, but Marry Me tested that resolve to the max and beyond. With nine Lopez songs included in the luxury package, it’s a tuneful showcase for a star with plenty, but there’s not much elegance in the artifice here; the harder Kat Coiro’s film tries to establish that our heroine is just ordinary Jenny from the Block, the more she looks wildly out of touch. An intimate scene in which she retires wounded to her boudoir to avidly watch a talk-show host on tv making fun of her romantic life doesn’t reflect much in terms of her inner monologue other than that she likes being the centre of attention. Wilson muddles through as a good-hearted maths teacher, but comic relief is anything but, coming from Moonfall’s John Bradley, easily 2022’s least valuable player so far,.

A Star Is Born’s 2018 remake made this kind of showbiz romance look easy, yet Marry Me makes something turgid of the whole notion of romancing a famous persona under a media spotlight. This isn’t Notting Hill, or indeed any film in which human beings behave normally; the scenes in which Valdez appears to throw off her trappings of success to discover her inner self makes zero sense, and only emphasise how cosseted and removed she is from any kind of reality. Marry Me is slick, high gloss entertainment, but it’s a dead end for performers and audience alike; Lopez is a genuine star, but she’s been poorly advised if this self-regarding film is the result.