For the Love of J. Lo

If you never thought or cared about why superstar entertainer Jennifer Lopez could never seem to be alone and not in a relationship over the past several decades, her new film released on Friday, This is Me…Now: A Love Story, is probably not for you. If back in 2017, you couldn’t care less that JLO had finally seemed to find her (seventh or eighth) soulmate in former baseball star/steroid user, Alex Rodiriguez (A-Rod), her new therapeutic, extended music video love letter to her own personal growth, is definitely not for you.

BUT, if back in the Spring of 2021 when you first heard rumblings that Lopez, fresh off breaking off an engagement to A-Rod, and former love Ben Affleck were spending time together again in Los Angeles—17 years after breaking off their own engagement—-you felt that, in a strange way, that nature was healing in America and the country was finding its way back to to normal after 2020’s mayhem, this MOST definitely is the surreal streaming experience for you.

Yes, Jennifer Lopez is once again dominating all of our senses, turning the clock back as if it was 2002-2003 when she (and Affleck) was literally everywhere. Capping off a two-week period that saw her perform on Saturday Night Live, appear (along with Affleck, Matt Damon and Tom Brady) in a quite funny and well-received Super Bowl ad for Dunkin Donuts, Lopez has released a  new album, This is Me…Now, accompanied by a bizarre, yet fun and life-affirming, one-hour streaming movie on Prime Video.

The film, This is Me…Now: A Love Story, and the album it accompanies are a 20-year follow up to Lopez’s popular 2002 album, This is Me…Then, which introduced the generational song and amusing honorific, Jenny From the Block. That song was Lopez’s attempt to explain that though she had become incredibly rich and famous as an actress, singer, designer and dancer and was ubiquitous in the tabloids, she was still just a hard-working Puerto Rican woman from the Castle Hill neighborhood of the South Bronx. But, as the new streaming film makes clear, the most important song on that album was not about the rocks that JLO got, but Dear Ben, a fairly boring auditory love letter to her one and only, Ben Affleck. It turns out that song predicted what would come some 20 years later.

The bare bones storyline for This is Me,,,Now: A Love Story (for anyone who hasn’t lost their mind yet) is Lopez, a hopeless romantic, coming to terms with the fact that she must learn to love herself first,before she can actually settle down and find true love instead of finding herself yet again in short-term, unfulfilling relationships with either celebrities or “hot guys with good credit scores” as one of her skeptical friends in the film says.

It’s basic pop psychology, a testament to the power of therapy in adulthood, and a somewhat relatable story about becoming comfortable with yourself after age 50 (albeit with a stunning, ageless physique). So, basically, a coming-of-age love story for a global Gen X celebrity who has finally grown up. We could stop there, but this is JLO after all, and her story demands much more. And, oh boy, does this film provide it.

While Lopez’s self-funded film doesn’t totally live up to the insane expectations implied by its trailer, which combined a steampunk aesthetic with cartoon imagery and what seemingly promised to be some type of gonzo mashup of West Side Story, Clockwork Orange, Working Girl, The Wiz and Blade Runner, This is Me…Now: A Love Story does deliver some of the goods. JLO imbues her search for self actualization and love within the contours of the Puerto Rican myth of Alida and Tarroo, two star-crossed lovers who cannot have a relationship because they are from warring tribes.

Alida becomes a red flower and Taroo becomes a hummingbird who searches for her (so when you see a hummingbird outside your window, just know he is searching for love, or something). The film races to its conclusion—-Lopez and Affleck riding off into the distance on an old motorcycle–after JLO performs a pseudo dance tribute to the Gene Kelly classic Singing in the Rain..in the rain, natch, outside of her therapist’s office on a street that resembles a block in the South Bronx. A bit off the wall,yes, but that only scratches the surface.

Perhaps most absurd: JLO’s therapist is fellow Gen X South Bronx native Fat Joe, a Puerto Rican/Cuban rapper who JLO has collaborated with over the past few decades. Fat Joe, also known by his nickname, Joey Crack, has led a group of rappers called the Terror Squad to several Top 40 hits while experiencing several brushes with the law with his friend, Big Punisher (who died at the age of 29 from weight-related health complications).

So the thought of Fat Joe playing Dr. Melfi to JLO’s Tony Soprano and helping Lopez come to grips with her internal challenges, including an addiction to love, strains all credulity.  But Fat Joe, who plays it straight in traditional male therapist garb (think soothing sweaters) guides Lopez through an analysis of her vivid dream sequences that bounce between an abusive relationship in a glass house, multiple marriage sequences to different men (mirroring her own past bumpy track record), and a mechanical heart factory fueled by rose petals, all to the upbeat soundtrack of JLO’s new album, her ninth. Plus Lopez dancing, as she always has.  If you are a JLo fan, you’ll love every minute of it.

Compounding the absurdity of it all, the film features a Jedi Council-like group of random celebrities—Trevor Noah, Post Malone, Sofia Vergara, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sadhguru, and, Jane Fonda among others—each embodying different astrological signs and watching over Lopez’s life as she careens from one destructive relationship to another. “Could be daddy issues,” the overly-tattooed Malone says at one point.  “Why does she always need to be with someone?” Fonda amusingly inquires.

Until finally, when Lopez learns to love…herself.  Like the most successful self-actualization processes, Lopez confronts her inner child, makes peace with her past and realizes that all along, SHE was the problem, not the men she dated. Lopez learns that you can’t keep running from yourself. From the storyline,it’s clear that Lopez has done a lot of real therapy with a real professional (not Fat Joe or Dr. Melfi) and, for the first time in her life, really seems comfortable with herself.. The film shows that she has learned to become the true hero of her own life story. Cue Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung!

The fact that in This is Me…Now: A Love Story, as in real life, that Lopez’s process of self-realization leads her into a marriage with the same man, Affleck, that she had been engaged to some 20 years ago makes this story somewhat irresistible and a source of on-going fascination for American popular culture. Twenty years ago, Lopez and Affleck were an insane tabloid story, fueled by the increasing power of the internet at the time, and the subject of ridicule from all quarters, including a famous South Park episode called Fat Butt and Pancake Head, which portrayed Lopez as a sultry manipulative hand puppet that loved Mexican food.

Meanwhile, the film where Lopez and Affleck met, Gigli, became quickly known as one of the worst movies of all time in 2003. The 24-7 attention was simply too much for the couple and Bennifer called off their wedding, going their separate ways in January 2004. Later that year, Lopez married singer Marc Anthhony and Affleck married actress Jennifer Garner. Each had children and most thought that was the end of their story. Or so we thought.

Nearly twenty years later in 2021, Lopez and Affleck found themselves single with pandemic time on their hands and reconnected. Less than two years later, they married, with Lopez legally taking Affleck’s last name; Bennifer Strikes Back! As it was for them two decades ago, Lopez and Affleck were smothered with media attention, paparazzi and social media obsessives that just couldn’t get enough of the relationship.

Yet instead of fighting the media machine that destroyed their first attempt at love, Lopez’s new film and the past two weeks have shown that Lopez (and Affleck) really seems to have grown up and obtained one of life’s great mature skills: learning to laugh at yourself and not take yourself too seriously. Two decades ago, the thought of these two self-obsessed stars doing This is Me…Now: A Love Story and a Dunkin ad that clearly poked fun at their personalities and different backgrounds was unfathomable. And yet, in 2024, Affleck helped produce (and appears very briefly) in the film, and Lopez has gone all-in on the peculiarities of their unlikely Boston-New York romance.

The fact that Lopez and Affleck seem so happy together once again and willing to embrace their fame in amusing ways, all in service of what seems to be a stable happy marriage (for now) comes at a time when popular culture seems desperate for stories of unity against unlikely odds in a country that seems to have turned against itself. Recently, we’ve had the Tracy Chapman-Luke Combs duet at the Grammys, the ongoing saga of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, and even Beyonce exploring the black Texan roots of country music. But the unlikely story of Jeniifer Lopez and Ben Affleck coming back together in these divided times may be the best story of them all.

Twenty years ago, if you would have predicted that Jennfer Lopez, an energetic, powerful Puerto Rican woman from the South Bronx and Ben Affleck, a talented but moody actor and producer with a Scottish background and numerous addictive personality traits from the Boston suburbs who was best friends with Matt Damon, would rekindle their relationship and find ever-lasting love as a blended family in Los Angeles, you would have been called truly nuts. Or a dreamer. Yet it is all happening and we now have this new JLO movie, album and, soon, a documentary on the same subject (The Greatest Love Story Never Told, coming Feb. 27) to prove it.

If anything, the resurrection of Bennifer and Jennifer Lopez facing her demons provides proof that, literally, anything is possible in America, including the once unfathomable thought that celebrity icons of Generation X could ever grow up, mature and save themselves, if not the country.  As Lopez sings on the title track of her new album,

Growin’ pains, broke some chains in every chapter

Now we know what it takes for our ever after

Took some lefts, now we’re right here where we are

And I sing…This is me now.

Heck, If Jennifer Lopez has grown up, maybe anyone can. Including the country.