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Sometimes levity does obtain liftoff. Sometimes, Lopez can trick you into believing that life ought to be a parka hood with a mile of fur trim or a large home along with your nickname tiled throughout in knockoff glamour. But if “This Is Me … Now” is to be believed, it’s a mansion for one. She has solely ever wished to provide us what she’s wished for herself but by no means convincingly attained: consolation.
Lopez desires, wants, hungers, craves, wishes, seeks, pines, needs, goals, hopes, believes, yearns, aches, hustles. You can see all of that within the onerous violence of her dancing — nothing comes simple, nothing flows. It’s a whole lot of bursts and breaks. (Here, she even retains within the sound of the dancer’s rustling cloth.) For 30 years she’s been at this: Mere leisure may not be sufficient. Lopez has all the time appeared out to show, not often to savor, relish or bask. On the 23-year-old remix of her hit music “I’m Real,” Lopez coos that second phrase, reworking it from a declaration of reality to a matter of existential doubt.
“This Is Me … Now” may simply have been original as a pure valentine to her present husband, Ben Affleck; the album makes room for one, “Dear Ben, Pt. II.” Instead, Affleck could be discovered barking below coats of make-up as a cable information troll. Why not get him — or another star — proper subsequent to her in a great romantic drama as a substitute of what Lopez could be seen doing right here, curling up on an enormous sofa mouthing Barbra Streisand’s strains in “The Way We Were”? Streisand’s heart-wrenched seriousness may very well be Lopez’s. She shares the inventive self-determinism that Streisand embodies, however opts to deal with that power like karaoke.
As a steward of her personal picture, Lopez may not imagine she has ever deserved aid, stability, happiness, a shower. A striver with a “stressed coronary heart,” as she places it right here, is solely who she is. Trying onerous is what she is aware of. The most fascinating side of these newish Affleck Dunkin’ advertisements — all proper, one of the fascinating facets — is that the Boston lunk he’s enjoying finds himself auditioning for her, doing his endearingly embarrassing greatest to make a great musical impression. That man is aware of what Dr. Joe and the Celebrity Zodiac don’t. Worth and worthiness is likely to be Lopez’s love language.
The unhappy information is that nothing in “This Is Me … Now” is as enjoyable — or humorous — as these commercials. This mission doesn’t appear to have introduced Lopez any nearer to serenity or levity. It’s an event for much more toil. Again: She forged herself and a bunch of girls to labor in a literal love manufacturing facility, and the situations are hazardous. No matter how highly effective and playful Lopez appears on the reside stage — in Las Vegas or within the live performance scenes in her romantic comedy from two years in the past, “Marry Me,” or throughout her 2020 Super Bowl halftime present with Shakira — she usually appears not sure within the films, torn about how huge or small, quiet or radiant to be. She appears confused, possibly even neurotic. (She has additionally put her fictional self on a shrink’s sofa.) With a reside performer, you need unquenchable. You’re paying for Category 5 Force of Nature. But an actor wants not less than a number of scenes of plausible relaxation, and onscreen, she will be able to not often, reliably find peace.
