‘This Is Me…Now: A Love Story’ Review: Jennifer Lopez Sells the Sizzle of Romance but Overcooks Her Personal Stake
variety.comTodd Gilchrist editor Jennifer Lopez has spent the better part of her career navigating the two halves of her public persona: Bronx-born girl next door “Jenny from the block” and Hollywood power player “J.Lo.” Though much of the tension between the two has been amplified by media coverage that spans calculated marketing campaigns and inescapable paparazzi scrutiny, Lopez has frequently seemed to capitulate to whichever of the two serves her best at the time. “This is Me…Now: A Love Story” is, on its face, the visual component of her self-funded ninth studio album, and at a reported $20 million price tag it’s easy to see it first and foremost as an advertisement.
But as not only the subject but star, co-writer and executive producer of an interlinked series of music videos, Lopez showcases above all else how tough it is to express oneself personally after more than 30 years in the public eye, resulting in a just-shy-of-feature-length film that offers much to admire even if it’s not fully successful.
Opening with the telling of the Puerto Rican myth of Alida and Taroo, lovers transformed into a flower and a hummingbird, Lopez (as “The Artist”) examines her own addiction to love, and the risks that come with falling hard, and fast, seemingly every time there’s an opportunity.
Given the bookends of the new album with its 2002 predecessor “This is Me…Then,” which was conceived the first time she and her now-spouse Ben Affleck were dating, it comes as a surprise that Affleck appears only in silhouette as the lover whose motorcycle she gets thrown from as they hurtle across a magic-hour landscape. (That said, he also pops up in heavy makeup as a newscaster, but his contributions to “Now” are minimal.) Their crash propels the.
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