As we saw when the trailer dropped and as we learned when her Variety cover was released this week, there were a lot of people in Jennifer Lopez’s life, everyone in her life, who thought her idea for her musical film, This Is Me Now: A Love Story, was batsh-t. Amazon made it available to stream a little early last night so I’ve seen it, and I can confirm, batsh-t is not an exaggeration. This film is nuts.
Most of you probably haven’t yet so I won’t go until detail until next week, but since we have these new photos of her in New York continuing to push the project – the album is out now, too – just a few quick thoughts.
JLo has confirmed that she financed the project herself, a $20 million investment into her work. And you can see it in the visuals. It’s the special effects, it’s sets, all the special guest stars, the elaborate choreography, her f-cking wardrobe. I mean, the outfits and the accessories and the hair and the makeup is worth the price of admission. This is a very expensive looking production that tells a pretty simple story. Like we don’t need to do a university course here on what JLo’s getting at – but it’s never going to look simple where JLo is concerned.
This Is Me Now, the movie, is corny AF. Corny and silly and chaotic and so cheesily on-the-nose, self-indulgent and hilarious – all the adjectives I was hoping it would be, screaming in delight and WTF within the first two minutes. And that’s before she throws herself in the choreo. Jennifer Lopez is 54 years old and she has never moved better. And I feel like, lately, we’ve stopped appreciating her dancing, maybe because she hasn’t stopped dancing and we’ve grown too accustomed to it? Here though, when it’s a full hour of her showing off her abilities in different styles of dance, it feels new again, fresh again, her stage presence, the energy that just explodes out of her – she’s almost reminding us that she’s an exhilarating performer, and always has been.
So, more on this, and the gossip, next week once you’ve had a chance to see it. For now, attached below - check her out yesterday in full court press, pure JLo styles in the fur coat and the open mouth posing. Then at night it was a satin jumpsuit worn with a baseball cap, still and forever Jenny From The Block.
