‘Marry Me’: Jennifer Lopez and a Solid Soundtrack Elevate a Ridiculous Premise
Sandra Miska
Jennifer Lopez’s new rom-com, “Marry Me,” has arrived for Valentine’s Day weekend, along with an outlandish premise. Pop superstar Kat Valdez’s (Lopez) plans to marry her beau and musical collaborator, heartthrob Bastian (Maluma), on stage at the last concert of her tour in front of not only a packed audience, but also the whole planet via Instagram Live. However, her world comes crashing down moments before the planned nuptials when she discovers that her fiancé has been cheating on her with one of her employees. It’s a devastating moment when we see her on stage in her designer wedding gown, but she turns it around when she accepts a “proposal” from a divorced dad and teacher Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson), who happens to be holding a “Marry Me” sign designed by his tween daughter, Lou (Chloe Coleman). They end up saying rushed vows in front of Kat’s massively confused fans, none more baffled than Charlie.
Whether or not Kat and Charlie’s impromptu wedding was a fairytale or a cry for help is determined by how the rest of plot unfolds, and anyone who has seen more than a few rom-coms can predict how it is going to go, and Lopez, who is no stranger to the genre, knows this.
“It’s hard to reinvent it every time,” the Lopez revealed to Entertainment Voice. “How do you make it different than the last one? We always know that two people are going to wind up together, and that’s going to be the end. It’s really about how interesting the journey is, the interaction between the two characters.”
Instead of taking action to sweep the marriage under a rug, Kat, who is sick of being a punchline, decides to try and get to know Charlie. She has her exasperated manager, Collin (John Bradley), propose to her husband that they date in front of the world for a period of three-six months, and in exchange, she’ll fund a new math wing at his school. Understandably, Charlie is cautious, but his best friend, guidance counselor Parker (Sarah Silverman) encourages him to go for it.
There’s no denying that the Kat and Charlie pairing defies all logic, and with less seasoned actors playing the characters, the film could easily fall flat. However, Lopez and Wilson elevate the script based on a flimsy premise, especially Lopez, who is basically playing a version of herself here. Both Lopez and Kat are superstar recording artists and savvy business women who find themselves struggling to be taken seriously at times, and their personal lives get a disproportionate amount of press compared to their accomplishments.
Wilson, who has made a career out of playing oddball characters, may seem like an unusual choice to play a character who is supposed to ground the story, but the actor, who has matured with age, does just that. Credit does not just go to Wilson, but also director Kat Coiro (She insists that the fact that she and the main character have the same name is purely coincidence).
“I really wanted to ground Charlie in a way that we would want this beautiful, powerful, talented woman to end up with him, in a way that did not feel like she was short-changing herself,” explained Coiro. “In the first draft of the script, he was very impressed by her wealth, by her money, by her fame, and it kind of turned me off, because I wanted them both to bring things to each other that the other hadn’t seen. It was a lot about balance.”
There are cheesy moments when “Marry Me” tries to be something it’s not, such as when Kat spouts some trite observations about feminism that make the film seem dated (“Why can’t women keep their names?”). However, Charlie makes sense when mentions during a press conference that marriages, historically, have been business transactions, and his and Kat’s marriage is no different.
Kat and Charlie’s story of getting married and then following in love may be old-fashioned in some ways, but the role social media plays in the film makes it a very modern one. While Charlie pushes Kat out of her comfort zone by challenging her to not rely on her employees during her day-to-day life, she gets him to make social media accounts in order to better relate to his daughter and his students. The awkwardness between them soon melts away, and their relationship really picks up and turns into something real after Charlie convinces Kat to turn down Bastian’s invitation to Puerto Rico in order to accompany him to a school dance. However, it is not easy for her to detangle herself from her ex, especially after they are nominated for a Grammy together, and his continued presence in her life threatens a union that had everything stacked against it in the first place.
Lopez discussed how social media can be a double-edged sword. “It used to be just the tabloids and the press, and now it’s social media, which is just as, or even more anxiety-provoking for people in the public eye,” she explained. Gone are the days when something happened and a celebrity can just hope no one said something and if they did, savvy public relations representatives could clean it up.
“If something happens, someone’s going to see it,” said Lopez. “They’re going to get it on camera; they’re going to talk about it; they’re going to share it. Navigating that as someone in the public eye, it can get tricky, especially when difficult things happen in your life, which Kat suffers in the beginning of the movie, which I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”
Finally, the soundtrack of “Marry Me” amplifies the emotional beats, from the earworm of a title track, a duet between Lopez and Maluma, to Lopez’s stunning ballad “On My Way.” She opened up about recording the “Marry Me” album and her role in deciding how the songs would be used in the film.
“It was my two worlds coming together,” she recalled. “Making the album, it was great. They really allowed me to input into where, and when, and what these musical moments would be for this character. They really looked to me to be like, ‘Okay, how would this be? How could we make this feel real?’ And actually picking the music for the arc of the character, there’s nobody who understood the character more than I did, and nobody who understood what it’s like to be a musical artist and be this person within the movie.”
“Marry Me” releases Feb. 11 on Peacock and in theaters nationwide.