Jennifer Lopez’s New Movie Is So Gloriously Weird

There’s a reason that Jennifer Lopez said that “everybody thought [she] was crazy” for making her $20 million musical fantasia/”cinematic odyssey” This Is Me… Now: A Love Story. The film was released on Prime Video on Valentine’s Day, and, now that we’ve seen it we can confirm it was one of the most bizarre and indulgent pop-star vanity projects I can remember watching. That is also why it’s so good—and, in different ways, both a refreshing departure for J. Lo and completely on-brand.

Watching This Is Me… Now: A Love Story is akin to popping a strong dose of melatonin before bed while scrolling through Us Weekly’s Instagram, and then navigating the bonkers dreams that ensue once you fall asleep.

It is a meditation on Lopez’s popular reputation for diving into—and then screwing up—very public relationships, while also, ostensibly, a personal rebuttal to all those outsiders who say that she’s foolish when it comes to love. There are moments when the on-screen character of J. Lo seems to directly address decades of gossip-rag shit-talk about her, articulating on her own terms how it’s felt to weather partnerships that don’t work out and the judgment that follows. These are the moments that bring back down to Earth a semi-autobiographical film that, at several points, literally takes place in the cosmos.

It’s fitting that a project this intimate and vulnerable from a star like Jennifer Lopez can also be described as “doing the absolute most.” That’s an ambition that, for better or worse, has defined her entire career. Yet there’s something so unabashed about This Is Me… Now’s extra-ness (there’s no better existing word for it) that sets it apart from past projects.

There’s a palpable striving for perfection and polish to Lopez’s career that can create an artifice, an unknowable barrier between the human and the performer. This Is Me…Now, on the other hand, is at times goofy as hell. Lopez often looks absolutely ridiculous. Good! As confessional as it is, it is equally outrageous—a “why the hell not” quality from Lopez that has never been more appealing. If you’re going to roll out your new album with a fever-dream film that dramatizes your journey back to marrying Ben Affleck, that’s the only attitude that could make it work: Truly, why the hell not?

It continues: Why the hell not cast Keke Palmer, Trevor Noah, Jenifer Lewis, Post Malone, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Kim Petras as a Zodiac council horrified over your relationship decisions? Why the hell not have them gossip about the most recent season of Vanderpump Rules in between arguing over which star sign would be your best match? Why the hell not have a full-on action dream sequence take place at a dystopian, malfunctioning rose petal factory where you are the heroic engineer? Why the hell not have a contemporary dance number take place at a Love Addicts Anonymous Meeting, or do your own version of “Singin’ in the Rain” with a CGI hummingbird?

These are huge, wild swings, each typically teed up by Lopez delivering an earnest, fragile monologue about love; it’s subtle acting that ranks among the best of her career, followed up by some of the most ludicrous musical numbers she’s ever done. The effect is less the tonal whiplash that may sound like. It comes off as a passionate melodrama from a person who sees such outsized emotion in her love journey that the only accurate depiction of it would be to escalate those quiet moments of feeling and reflection into massive, sometimes silly set pieces.

This Is Me… Now contrasts fascinatingly with the recent Eras Tour and Renaissance projects from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. It’s not just because it’s not a concert film; Lopez is going on her first tour in years and could easily have opted to produce one of those instead of something as unusual as This Is Me… Now. All three stars’ films are risky in their own ways, and each is a celebration of the performer at the peak of their own brand of artistry.

That there’s nothing straightforward about Lopez’s film—to the point that no one could have predicted most of the content featured in it—is fitting. While undeniably an A-list star, Lopez’s career has been a series of many left turns. Her path to This Is Me…Now resembles more of a curlicue spiral to where she is today than the more linear trajectory some of her peers have taken. Is this movie weird? Extremely. But that’s precisely what makes it so exciting.