Walking Into the Same Wall and Blaming the Wall
Jennifer Lopez tells an honest story of love addiction
While I’m no fan of celebrity culture (and don’t get me started on “influencer” as a job description), I don’t mind when the rich, famous and beautiful announce themselves as addicts or alcoholics in recovery. Nothing shuts up the “if only I were rich/famous/beautiful/whatever everything would be okay and I wouldn’t have to drink/drug/binge/whatever” voice in my head faster than a rockstar at the podium of a 12-step meeting. It’s good to be reminded that the voice in my head lies to me. If Megan Fox looks like Megan Fox and is still a love addict, my problem isn’t how I look or how many people know my name or how much money I have in the bank. And no disrespect to Megan Fox, but that goes double for JLo.
So if Jennifer Lopez wants to spend $20 million of her own money to shoot a steampunk/Bollywood/emo musical extravaganza detailing the pain of her love addiction, I’m up for it. Even if a possibly absurd amount of that budget did go to the make-up department, I approve. (Seriously, it took less time and effort to do The Joker’s lips….)
Whatever I may think of Jennifer Lopez’ music — that it’s commercial, predictable, repetitive, overproduced, and did I say repetitive? — she is an amazing dancer, has an outsized onscreen presence, and has been a huge success for decades. So when a heavenly Jane Fonda looks down on the earthly (and earthy) heroine in This Is Me… Now making romantic mistake after romantic mistake and muses, “She’s smart, she’s beautiful, she seems so strong - why does she always need to be with somebody?”… you have to wonder, yeah, what’s up with that? If JLo can’t get this, what hope is there for me?
There is hope, says the movie, and it’s not perhaps what her fans expected. You know how most people go into recovery for love addiction just to get well enough to find love? Somehow, no one ever notices the irony. Most people thought this was going to be a story about roses and hummingbirds, true love and soulmates and how Jennifer Lopez got back together with her runaway groom Ben Affleck, after 20 years apart and three marriages in between, and they lived happily ever after. That’s not the story she tells. Affleck isn’t even in the movie, other than in an almost unrecognizable cameo.
As Lopez’ producing partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas put it, “I was afraid that she was telling her journey and that it would look like ‘Here’s my journey from Ben to Ben.’ And it’s not about that. It’s about ‘Here’s what I’ve been through for the past 20 years, and I kept walking into the same wall and blaming the wall until I started to look at myself.’”
This is a story about healing from within, of being okay with “whatever happens, whoever happens, if nothing happens” as she tells her onscreen therapist. She even goes to a Love Addicts recovery group, and if you can forgive some cringey modern dance, it’s more accurate than most portrayals.
As Lopez told Daily Variety, “You have these patterns you haven’t figured out yet. And you get into these relationships where you compromise yourself in ways that you never thought you would. Or you allow people to treat you in ways that you never thought you would. That certainly has happened to me.”
There are brutally honest scenes of her with an abusive partner (“Why do you always make me do this?” he whines as he hits her) and effervescent scenes of her dancing with interchangeable husbands at interchangeable wedding parties. (“Don’t catch it, it’s cursed!” whispers one wedding guest as the bouquet is tossed.) There is a dancing in the rain tribute to Singing In The Rain and we get Neil deGrasse Tyson, of all people, giving astrological advice. There’s Poor Things-level set-dec and real estate porn to make HGTV turn green with envy. But mostly, there is Jennifer Lopez trying to heal her child self in a surprisingly touching way. You guys know I am not sentimental. I was touched.
So, sure, plenty of viewers are going to get the message that true love is the reward for personal growth. (Also for a good personal trainer, apparently…) But that’s not the message she’s sending. The message she’s sending is that personal growth is the reward for personal growth. And I have to love her for that.