Jennifer Lopez: This Is Her Then … Now ... (Again)
Minute Maid 'Lemonade'
Jennifer Lopez recorded an album to film a music-video-movie-thing (more on this later) to make a documentary. The most generous read of “This Is Me…Now,” her sequel to 2002’s “This Is Me…Then,” is that she felt like talking in The Greatest Love Story Never Told, a documentary now streaming on Amazon Prime. The doc is 90 minutes of J.Lo speaking candidly and emotionally about the gargantuan effort it takes to, at every single moment, choose to be J.Lo. Lopez is not exceptional at singing or dancing or acting, but she is very exceptional at being Jennifer Lopez, and that is a separate, unique talent.
This is her third such documentary in ten years. They all kind of have the same thesis: J.Lo is always the underdog or the striver, permanently the also-ran. HBO cameras followed her around for Dance Again, released in 2014, as she embarked on a world tour, made a comeback judging on American Idol, and navigated her divorce from Marc Anthony. In Halftime, released in 2022, Netflix cameras trailed her as she prepared to co-headline the Super Bowl Halftime Show with Shakira and when she tried, and failed, to secure awards attention for Hustlers. (And also maybe I was in it.) In The Greatest Love Story Never Told, Lopez lets the cameras into her home, her rehearsals, and her relationship with Ben Affleck. (A-Rod was conspicuously not in Halftime, released after they broke up, but he’s never seen a camera he won’t put on a show for. Affleck guides The Greatest Love Story Never Told as a gently reassuring, but also gently grounding, talk-to.) This doc retreats much of the same territory as the last two. It reveals J.Lo’s trauma — a healthy (low-alcoholic) cocktail of talent insecurity, middle child syndrome, and the American marriage industrial complex — so similarly that you might start to track each project’s consistencies. The Greatest Love Story Never Told doesn’t really tread any new emotional ground, except the glee-inducing revelation that she calls Ben Affleck “Papi,” and she luhs him. (By the end you will, too.)
“This Time Around” and the title track are the clear standouts on an largely unremarkable 13-song album. Where do I even begin with the music video-mini feature film? If I told you what happens in This Is Me … Now I’m not sure you’d believe me. Jennifer Lopez puts in hours at the heart factory, which powers her heart through rose petals being loaded into a furnace, of course. Ben Affleck is a kind of Sean Hannity-ATN News-y pundit narrating various current events, obviousy. Keke Palmer does an impression of Maya Angelou, naturally. J.Lo returns to the Bronx to meet — and heal — her younger self-slash-inner child, duh. The songs are sequenced into a narrative of a love-addict suffering withdrawls before she decides to be happy on her own, and gets rewarded with the bottom third of Ben Affleck’s face as a result.
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