Second Act

Yes, it’s MORE Jennifer Lopez; not content with delivering the skinny about her latest, Marry Me, I’m taking a deep dive into the back-catalogue with this 2018 rom-com. Who’s up for the story of how Jennifer Lopez might mastermind a corporate plan for marketing soap? Thought so, and since you clearly want to know more, Peter Segal’s comedy-drama is here with all the details of what that might look like.

Second Act opens in improbable fashion with the eternally youthful Jennifer Lopez losing her big-box store job and being told she’s probably too old to find gainful employment; it’s a detail that seem to run contrary to the impossibly glamorous appearance of the star.  Maya Vargas (Lopez) is a humble Queens super-market worker who loses her employment; her nephew comes to the rescue and bigs her Linkedin profile up by inventing skill-sets Maya doesn’t know she has. Unaware of the scale of his deception, Maya gets interviewed for a choice Manhattan job, and her street-smarts impress her boss (Treat Williams). Will Maya make the grade?

Cue various adventures in marketing as Maya builds and wins a team, invents a new face-cream product, and tries to conceal her lack of academic skills from her bosses, although a bluff about her knowledge of professional rowing proves to be her undoing. Lopez is personable as ever, even when pretending to be an ordinary J-Lo, and there’s bonus support from Jess from The Gilmore Girls, Milo Ventimilgia.

Second Act feels like a sister to 1988’s Working Girl, mixing you-can-do-it sentiment and a wonderfully airbrushed New York so bracingly clean you could eat your dinner off it. Despite an out-dated 80’s feel, Segal’s film eventually washed its face at the box office, but it’s a ripe slice of cheese, with silly pratfalls for a game star who can still carry a film even at such an advanced age.