Jennifer Lopez in “This Is Me … Now”.Photo:Jennifer Lopez/YouTube
Jennifer Lopez/YouTube
This Is Me . . . Now: A Love Story,the conceptual musical that accompaniesJennifer Lopez’s new album of the same name, is the superstar’s valentine to romance, to husbandBen Affleckand — why not? — to herself.
Me,now streaming on Amazon, is essentially a fairy tale or fable reconfigured in terms of the modern myth of self-validation.
Lopez plays a woman, named the Artist, who keeps tripping up in her relationships. Why? Because she’s forgotten to love herself! Once that lesson is unlocked, she’s liberated from her past and ready to find her forever-after soulmate: Although he’s glimpsed only elliptically at the end,Prince Charming has Affleck’s lightly stubbled cleft chin.
It’s a gauzy, dreamy moment of union, unlike the couple’s recent Super Bowl ad forDunkin' Donuts. That falls more into the tradition of domestic marital comedy,post-union, with its hints of amiable friction and give-and-take after years together. Although, compared to what most people experience in long-term relationships, that ad is gauzy and dreamy, as well.
The 65 minutes leading toMe’sAffleck apotheosis add up to a pull-out-all-the-stops musical — wildly, deliriously ornate — that sweeps us through a string of extravagant fantasy numbers, all of them showcasing the album’s infectious songs. We see:
Her wedding fantasy.Jennifer Lopez/YouTube
But who are these friends, anyway? Why would Lopez aka the Artist ever bother with them? When she’s away from them and alone in her immense house, she mopes about in an enviable state of supreme, languorous glamour — a diva unencumbered.
Lopez is as entitled to this gorgeous pose of solitude as she is to love.
source: people.com
