Staying Fit
Sarah Rogers
To coincide with the release of her ninth studio album, This Is Me … Now, pop superstar Jennifer Lopez, 54, this week released a one-hour Prime Video movie that includes nearly an album’s worth of music videos and a narrative arc that mirrors her personal history and all her tabloid-worthy romantic entanglements.
There’s a lot to pack in – including her on again-off again-on again relationship to Ben Affleck, 51, whom she married in the summer of 2022 (nearly two decades after the two broke off a widely publicized engagement). Yes, he turns up in a brief cameo – along with a host of other stars including Keke Palmer, Sofía Vergara, 51, Jenifer Lewis, 67, Trevor Noah and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, 65. Yes, Cosmos host and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Here are some takeaways of the highs (and J.Los) of the buzzy new project.
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What is the movie about?
The film loosely follows J.Lo’s lifelong quest for love. Or, as she said in a recent interview with Variety, “a hopeless romantic’s journey through life in her search for love.” We get a montage of her first three weddings, where the grooms seem like most interchangeable dance partners in a Bollywood-style group dance to a song aptly titled “Can’t Get Enough.” We also see a succession of romances with various partners, some of whom are physically or emotionally abusive (cue a song called “Rebound” in which mismatched couples are tethered to each other with bungee-style cords).
Lopez’s character seems to be addicted to a fairy-tale ideal of romance, to the point that her pals at one point stage an intervention – a move supported by her longtime therapist (played with some gravitas and a wry glimmer by the rapper Fat Joe, 53). It’s only after spending time on her own, getting to know and appreciate her own value, that she seems open to a partner who might be worthy of her.
The trailer teased a ton of A-list cameos – how do they fit in exactly?
In addition to Fat Joe, there’s an awards show worth of stars packed into this film. Her ex-hubbies are played by Tony Bellissimo (Step Up), Derek Hough (Dancing With the Stars) and Trevor Jackson (grown-ish). But the starriest cameos are written in the stars – a pantheon of gods and goddesses called the Zodiacal Council that watches over J.Lo’s adventures and offers wry commentary. That includes singer Post Malone as Leo, Trevor Noah as Libra, Jenifer Lewis as Gemini, Kim Petras as Virgo, Keke Palmer as Scorpio, Sofía Vergara as Cancer, Jay Shetty as Aries and Neil deGrasse Tyson as Taurus.
But this Greek Chorus of observers is dominated by Jane Fonda, 86, who famously played J.Lo’s mother-in-law in the 2005 rom-com Monster in Law and here gets all the best lines as Sagittarius. At one point, she voices our own voyeuristic feelings about watching J.Lo’s topsy-turvy love life: “It’s like a Vanderpump Rules marathon and I stop judging them and start judging myself.”
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