Ben Affleck Is a Ridiculous, Blonde, Southern Love Guru in JLo’s ‘This Is Me… Now’ Movie

Yes, Ben Affleck is in Jennifer Lopez’s This Is Me… Now: A Love Story movie, but not quite in the role you’d expect. Unless the role you’re expecting him to play is that of a long, blond-haired, Southern cable news anchor who has a lot of strong opinions on the subject of love. If that’s the case, then Affleck plays exactly the role you’re expecting him to play.

Now streaming on Prime Video—and released in tandem with Lopez’s new album, This Is Me… Now—this new 65-minute special isn’t so much a movie as it is a visual album. Directed by Dave Meyers, and written by Lopez and Matt Walton, This Is Me… Now: A Love Story is sort of like Beyoncé’s Lemonade, but a heck of a lot more campy. At it’s core, it’s a tribute to Lopez and Affleck’s once-in-a-lifetime love story, following Lopez’s emotional journey after the infamous Bennifer break-up in 2004. Lopez cheerfully pokes fun at her many relationships and marriages that followed. Ultimately, her character in This Is Me… Now: A Love Story must find herself before she is able to find her way back to her one true love, aka Ben Affleck.

Though he’s never mentioned by name, and though you never see his face, Affleck is clearly the man driving the motorcycle at the beginning of the film, representing the guy that Lopez’s character was truly in love with… until his motorcycle crashes and burns. (Just like the relationship! Get it?) But you do see Affleck’s face when he appears as a different character: Rex Stone, the absolutely ridiculous host of the fictional cable news segment, “The Truth Report.”

Viewers may not recognize Affleck right away, given that he’s wearing a long, blonde wig, a fake nose, prosthetic wrinkles, bright white veneers, and speaks in a rough Southern drawl. But trust me, that’s Affleck. Rex first appears before the first music video, berating his viewers on the lost art of loving people. “All we do is slap sexy graphics and theme songs on videos of people being assholes to one and other,” Affleck rants to the camera, while a sensationalist graphic asks if true love is real. “We have no love for each other! We have no love for ourselves!”

It’s hard to take him seriously when he looks like a cross between an aging ’70s pop star and Donald Trump, but he does have a point.

Those veneers will haunt my nightmares.

Rex shows up again soon after, before the “Rebound” music video, with more grips about the state of love in today’s society. “In 2012, the No. 1 question people asked was, ‘What is love?'” Affleck tells his fake audience. “As of today, the top 10 questions are: What should I watch? Where my refund? How you like me now? Why women kill? Will I get laid? Is Europe a country? How I screenshot a Mac? Am I pregerant? And why my poop green?”

Who wrote Rex Stone’s script, and why do I feel like it may have been Affleck himself? He’s having a little bit too much fun with these lines.

Unfortunately, save for a brief appearance around the movie’s halfway mark, that’s the last we see of Rex Stone until the end of the movie. But be sure to stick around for the mid-credits scene, which features one last bit of love advice from “ol’ Rexy.”

“Loving yourself means never having to say, ‘I’m lonely,'” Affleck tells the camera sagely. “It means ol’ Rexy can go down to the lobby bar, order the oysters and a club soda, and go to bed smiling. Even though the waitress was mean as a diabetic honey-badger. Because only you can let the love in your heart die. And you should never let it die.”

I mean… wow. Just wow. What more is there to say after that?