Stream It Or Skip It: ‘This Is Me…Now: A Love Story’ on Prime Video, A Maximum Music Video (Or Mini Movie Maybe?) With New J-Lo Jams And Her Musings On Love

Jennifer Lopez’s many romances have long been public knowledge. With This Is Me…Now: A Love Story (now streaming on Prime Video), the megastar singer, actress, and dancer is just formalizing her journey. Formalizing by working with veteran music video director Dave Meyers to create this lavish, sometimes ridiculous (lavishdiculous?) many-headed music video film that showcases her ninth studio album. Formalizing by making an accompanying documentary, which releases later this month. And formalizing by spending twenty million bucks to finance this three-pronged initiative, which embraces a new, more public standing for her 2022 marriage to Ben Affleck. Ben’s along for the ride in This Is Me…Now, either on a motorcycle or wearing a wig and prosthetic nose. But the Dunkin’ spokesman isn’t not the only celeb who heeded J-Lo’s call. Kim Petras, Jane Fonda, Keke Palmer, Post Malone, Derek Hough, Tony Bellissimo…and even Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let’s get into it.       

THIS IS ME … NOW – A LOVE STORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Imagine a big, glittery concept music video for a splashy new release from a major artist. It’d be easier to imagine if MTV was still a cultural barometer and actually programming music videos, but it’s possible to imagine it. Now, multiply that video by 14. That’s the basic frame for This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, where feature set pieces are constructed around new Jennifer Lopez songs like “Can’t Get Enough,” “Dear Ben” (also “Dear Ben, Pt. II”), and “Midnight Trip to Vegas.” But there’s nothing else basic about this.  

A fairy tale tome appears. It’s the story of Alida and Taroo, Lopez tells us in voiceover. She became a flower; he, a hummingbird. And like these star-crossed lovers out of Puerto Rican legend, it was always J-Lo’s dream to be in love. But as we all know, that dream can be elusive, even dangerous. Dangerous enough to set off the alarms in your heart factory. The aorta, ventricles, and veins of an enormous steampunk heart appear. As the organ shakes and shudders – it can’t withstand her quaking stabs at love! – J-Lo’s factory employees respond with a frenetic dance choreo down on the rose petal assembly line.

Now we’re in session with Lopez’s therapist (Fat Joe). She’s met someone new, but is it too soon? Turns out it’s definitely too soon to live in a glass mansion with an angry drunk (Gilbert Saldivar). Observing the action from space is the “Zodiacal Council,” a cabal of cameo celebs who manifest each star sign – this group includes Petras, Fonda, Palmer, Post, Tyson, Sofia Vergara, Trevor Noah, and Jenifer Lewis – and they’re on hand to witness incarnations of Lopez’s marriages, played by Hough, Bellissimo, and Trevor Jackson. The wedding reception dance routine is a lively affair.

There is more. So. Much. More. J-Lo’s attendance at a Love Addicts Anonymous meeting is another chance for dance, this time to a ballad. She watches The Way We Were and mouths Barbra Streisand’s lines. Her group of friend archetypes – another gaggle of celebs that includes Danielle Larracuente, Brandon Delsid, Alix Angelis, Ashley Versher, and Malcolm Kelner – offer various versions of support and interventional worry. And all along, Lopez searches for her true heart, an exploration that takes her to a representation of her old Bronx neighborhood, where she sings and dances with her younger self (Bella Gagliano), and even a magical landscape of moving hummingbird wood sculptures that channels her longing for an Affleckian reunion. “We’re all made of stardust,” Tyson’s Taurus intones from his celestial perch. “Those little molecules dancing inside us? That too is love.” So they’re not Dunkin’ sprinkles?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Covid era spawned numerous fawning artist documentaries designed to fill the gap left by tour, travel, and promotional restrictions. And while Lopez will soon drop her own doc with The Greatest Love Story Never Told – seriously, when are we gonna get the Kardashianish reality show starring her and Affleck? – and J-Lo’s interpretation of the miniature movie form is definitely audacious, making one of these things to juice an album launch isn’t itself novel. Beyonce released Lemonade upon the world way back in 2016. Kasey Musgraves made an enjoyably stoned companion piece to her fourth record. And Halsey got medieval and very, very concept-y with If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power.      

Performance Worth Watching: Among Lopez’s zodiacal cohort, Keke Palmer as Scorpio definitely understood the absurdism of the This Is Me…Now assignment. And honestly is Fat Joe’s therapy practice taking new patients? The “Lean Back” legend and memoirist seems like he’d be a very good listener.   

Memorable Dialogue: “What’s wrong with wanting to spend your life with someone?” J-Lo asks Dr. Fat Joe. “I believe in magic. I believe good things happen if you’re a good person.” Now she’s on a roll. “I believe in soul mates! And signs! I believe that love never dies and forever is real and that as long as I – 

Joe: “Time’s up.”  

Sex and Skin: Lopez, her friend group, her husbands, her dancers, her celestial observers: everyone in This Is Me…Now stays mostly covered up. The women who work at J-Lo’s heart factory, whether on the flower petal assembly line or in the main control room, they might strip to their shirtsleeves whenever the star’s love life cranks chaotic heat into the facility. But even that crew dons bulky hazmat suits when it’s time for their intrepid boss to inject hearts and flowers directly into the central organ’s core.   

Our Take: So many segues! But at least they’re seamless. This Is Me…Now: A Love Story has a professional sheen at every turn – money well spent for Jennifer Lopez, it seems – and lots and lots of little touches that feel very individual to the star. (Does Adidas make a line of resplendent bespoke ponchos? Because they do for J-Lo.) It’s not going to live up to promotional billing that refers to This Is Me…Now with terms like “cinematic odyssey” and “mythological storytelling.” But it is fantastically ambitious, and if you ask us, the grandiosity of that heart factory sequence should be fleshed out. (Seriously, its dramatic climax mirrors the finale of Loki season two. Well, maybe next album.) How successful Lopez’s maximum video/miniature movie is at promoting her new jams probably depends on whether you like her new jams. (Some of the material does indeed achieve sonic connectivity with her 2002 record This Is Me…Then.) But if you consider it as gaudy fuck you money window dressing for an honestly very relatable central idea – “Whatever happens, whoever happens, if nothing happens,” J-Lo muses in therapy, “I’m good” – then why not fire this thing up? Bonus: Fluffy the dog is very cute.

Our Call: STREAM IT. It was just Valentine’s Day, for the Zodiacal Council’s sake. Let Jennifer Lopez’s lovelorn conceptual freakout wash over you, and consider for yourself whether it’s a music video by chapter or a movie in miniature. The ridiculosity of this thing writes its own hot takes.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.