This Is Me… Now (2024)

This-Is-Me…-Now-(2024)
This Is Me… Now (2024)

The sound of fairy tale music gets louder and a beautiful illustrated storybook appears on screen. The camera cuts to Lopez, the star of the film who says “Have you heard about the wonders of Alida and Taroo’s tale?”. Alida and Taroo are two lovers from enemy tribes who become a red flower and blue hummingbird thanks to the miracle intertwining of gods. Now Lopez comes back with her new album, This Is Me. Now, in which she wrote together with the Pathé company another fairy tale this time about herself as she found love: “It’s quite funny to be observed for years by people who see you have been in a number of relationships and you finally get into one that is so perfect”. JLo sounds genuine as she draws the curtain to her romantic reunion with her ex-husband Ben Affleck, this time successfully collaborating with him. That man once took part in an SNL episode featuring Olbermann and jokingly poked fun at all the concepts of the show.

That is until the motorcycle crashes, the two disperse, the picture shatters, and Lopez is stuck in a steampunk heart factory in the apocalypse. Here we get the film’s first musical interlude “Hearts and Flowers, the lyrics of which are as corny as the narration of Lopez. “I made it through the rain, the trauma, and the pain,” the lady pleads while she and the factory workers, styled as if from Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” give a panicked effort to the task of repopulating the shattered metal heart with the red flower petals, all of which have nearly completely decayed.

Lopez’s vocals may be a bit too autotuned for my liking but her dance moves still remain sharp and packed with energy. In the scene featuring “Rebound,” there is a group of couples living in a glass house, and pieces of cloth connect them. Once released, the cloth snaps back to its original position like a yo-yo in a choreography, which is what Tanztheater, founded by the great German contemporary dancer Pina Bausch is all about. There is yet another passage, in a group therapy scene, where Lopez redresses some dance from “Mein Herr” of “Cabaret” in a very rough emotional way, which entrusts her movements in the center of the performance.

The narrative unfolds as stylistic shifts between daydreaming rehearsals of Lopez’s new album, recordings with the rapper Fat Joe who is Lopez’s close friend, and paranoid discussions with members of the ‘Zodiacal Council’ consisting of Jane Fonda, Post Malone, Keke Palmer, Jennifer Lewis, Kim Petras, Jay Shetty, Sofia Vergara, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Trevor Noah, Sadhguru, etc., who play the role of actors and also of astrological signs. Each of these supposed models endorses one of the twelve astrological signs, but humorously, no one identifies themselves as Aquarius or Capricorn. I’ll leave it to the astrological community to decipher those. Of course, what would an aloof presentation be without some self-fueled crassness? Fat Joe also manages to shine during his moments with the Lopez family, whom he has known for many decades. He has claimed that he is frequently not around much, so I guess they had 27 years of bonding to draw upon. The “Romantics Anonymous” group therapy session was one of the more accomplished moments of the show thanks in part to Paul Raci’s brilliant performance as the group therapist.

Therapist and admirer of Lopez’s body of work in cinema, particularly of her romance, the singer speaks about the deeper meanings of her filmography while love is much better than being lonely. The music video for Lopez’s third single “Can’t Get Enough,” features her trademark wit that has been chiefly influenced by her three failed marriages, and parodies the typecasting of her as a romantic lead in three wedding-themed films. The Wedding Planner, Marry Me, and Shotgun Wedding. The final insult is posed by Fat Joe who disrupts Lopez’s romantic monologue about perfect love. After another breakup scene, the fans see Lopez in a new light, with her head down and mouthing along to the words of Barbara Streisand. For Lopez, romance is not only captivating, it is where all of her creativity overflows the boundaries of reality into fantasy. Her warmth during these roles is due to the fact that she comprehends the characters’ situations, and so, the audience. Low brow? Not for her.

On the downside, it’s held back by poor CGI effects, constipated editing, and clunky attempts at stage and camera compositions. Director Dave Meyers perhaps never gets Lopez’s take quite right. In a scene evocative of “Singin in the Rain” Lopez takes Gillian’s delight in the film’s famous rain sequence perfectly, but there is also the matter of how the star is articulately pictured orchestrated by Meyers, which spoils the beauty of that scene intended to deliver.

Though criticized for its technical aspects, there is courage as it is quite evident that Lopez chooses to bare her vulnerabilities as she recovers from some of her self-inflicted wounds exposing her biggest blunders, her worst traumatizing experiences, and how she worked tirelessly to heal herself before she committed to a love story that she had longed for as a child. While I do feel that her decision to keep her fairytale ending to herself may isolate some viewers, I believe after decades of the media pulling apart Bennifer 2.0, it’s only fair that they have their much-needed peace away from the media.

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