Jennifer Lopez Stages a Visual Odyssey through Her Relationship History in This Is Me…Now: A Love Story

We begin at the beginning. The very beginning. Back before Gigli. Back before Jenny was even a glimmer in the block’s eye. We begin at the origin of love itself; or at least an origin of love costing a dear thing. Using a Taíno-Puerto Rican legend, Jennifer Lopez’s voiceover introduces her audience to the devastation of love—a burden with which Lopez is well-acquainted. Colorful, mural-like mosaics collapse into each other, illustrating the doomed romance of “Alida and Taroo,” two star-crossed lovers whose fates transform them into a flower and a hummingbird, respectively, forever seeking their estranged mate. Through this mythology, Lopez sets the stage for a semi-serious examination, and eventual celebration, of her own sometimes-hopeless romanticism. It’s no small feat, but within an impressively swift 65 minutes, centuries worth of inherited infatuation are healed by the power of VFX, inner child work, and Jane Fonda.  

An accompaniment to her ninth studio album, This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is Jennifer Lopez’s visual odyssey through a relationship history that every tabloid and their grandmother has an opinion on. But, as Lopez’s pre-recorded intro to her sneak peek screening presses, This Is Me…Now is a dual opportunity. This is the chance for Lopez to narrate the trajectory of heartbreak in her own words, visually, aurally and narratively. It’s also a chance for her audience to seek the truth. Thankfully, This Is Me…Now is not overly concerned with realism as much as the spirit of self-actualization. This is J.Lo now, then, and breathing what could be into life on multiple planes of existence. This is J.Lo’s Cloud Atlas and, for that, J.Lo fans everywhere can grab their popcorn and prepare for a dizzying ride. 

Helmed by veteran music video director Dave Meyers and co-written by Lopez and Matt Walton, the visual album is, first and foremost, dazzlingly romantic. It is also minorly self-reflexive, gratifyingly excessive, ham-fistedly and lovingly referential, and gleefully riding the pendulum between the nostalgic warmth of a well-designed movie musical and the cool uncanny valley of a contemporary digital sci-fi. Often, the two tones crash into each other at top speed. In her opening number, Lopez is an A-framed factory foreman navigating literalized, alternately Snowpiercer and Armageddon-tinted (but cravenly ugly) heartbreak in the form of a giant mechanical heart-shaped engine fed by increasingly scarce rose petals harvested by an army of women workers. A softer moment plops Lopez into a see-through Sims house where she can longingly recite the lines to The Way We Were alongside Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand; another onto a deserted, rainy street where she hip-hops a tribute to Gene Kelly in eye-strainingly dim lighting.

Music videos and narrative vignettes are strung together by Lopez playing “The Artist,” an exaggerated version of herself talking, dreaming and singing through her problems with her therapist (rapper Fat Joe). With the launchpad of psychoanalysis, Lopez is free to careen through cinematic genres at will, consistently chasing spectacle as she, Fat Joe and her ultra-hip, attractive and equally maladjusted young friends ask what she’s missing in her life. Though it’s obvious to any casual listener of 2002’s This Is Me…Then that at least part of the answer to that soul-searching question will be “Ben Affleck,” much of Lopez’s path to her once-and-future fiancé is chaotic. When beats are predictable, they’re largely successful because they play to Lopez’s strengths as a performer: Extravagant and bonkers showmanship, borderline uncomfortable earnestness, and coy rom-com ditziness and self-deprecation.  

One of the most successful musical sequences is one which traffics in all three of these. For “Can’t Get Enough,” one of the singles and music videos released prior to the album’s drop, Lopez shows off her best and most impractical wedding couture as she dances through three interchangeable grooms at the same million-dollar reception. Derek Hough plays one of the featured hubbies, reuniting with his World of Dance colleague for the old razzle-dazzle, whirling about the dance floor and generally giving everyone a case of choreographic envy. Pink and white flowers crowd every inch of the ballroom, filling the most important day of any good ingenue’s life with a sense of amazement and gratitude that true love is possible. As Lopez blissfully wonders, “Is this real life / Too good to be true,” her friends in attendance make bets on how long these poor suckers will last. By the end of the sequence, the shine has come off. As she consumes her third round of the symbolic first slice of wedding cake, Lopez is teetering, unstable and developing the glassy stare of a woman on the verge. 

Moments like these are the most grounded and piercing throughout a project that revels in saturnalia. They don’t last long, but the combination of lush practical sets (as opposed to the overwrought CG that dominates much of the visual album), a self-contained and self-aware coherent narrative, and the full employ of Lopez’s acting chops do produce a commendable three minutes of movie magic with a satisfying note of real gravitas. Of course, the film then shuttles into a B-plot of stunt casting: A “Zodiacal council” watching over Lopez’s feverish quest for love from the stars. Among the astrological peanut gallery are romantically weary Sagittarius Jane Fonda and Gemini Jennifer Lewis, an underutilized but always funny Cancer Sofia Vergara, ineffectual Virgo Kim Petras and Leo Post Malone, and Lopez’s perpetually charming Hustlers co-star Keke Palmer as the Scorpio pinch hitter. The council seems to exist primarily for gasps as each new cast member is revealed, and to queue up the implicit punchline that the only sign that can truly understand what a Leo needs is another Leo. 

It’s difficult to put a cohesive rating on This Is Me…Now: A Love Story when it jostles between such ludicrous heights and occasional visual offenses (an all-CGI depiction of the Bronx of Lopez’s youth is particularly egregious)—and between more restrained moments of introspection and some surprising vulnerability—but it’s all undeniably engaging. The expressionism of a narrative visual album, the outsize reputation and occasional introspection of its star and author, and the delight of watching a film without any idea of where its artist could be charging ahead at full speed forgives most trespasses. There’s no question that This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is from the heart, soul, dreams and budget of Jennifer Lopez, and despite some of its visual missteps, it’s a pleasure to immerse yourself in that level of wholehearted artistic commitment for a little over an hour. 

Director: Dave Meyers
Writer: Jennifer Lopez, Matt Walton
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, Sofía Vergara, Jane Fonda, Keke Palmer
Release Date: February 16, 2024 (Amazon Prime)

Shayna Maci Warner (@bernieteeters) is a Brooklyn-based film programmer, preservationist and GLAAD-awarded critical queer. Their words on queer feelings and films appear in Autostraddle, The Film Stage and Film Cred, among others, and they write a horny newsletter about the girls and gays that make movies worth watching. You can summon her by yodeling “Desert Hearts was robbed!” into the sunset.