Jennifer Lopez Gives Us An Age-Appropriate Rom-Com

With Marry Me we finally get a fresh take on what is often a tedious genre, writes Rachelle Unreich.  

---

---

I thought I had aged out of rom-coms. Most of the time, when I watched them, the characters were first-dating and flirting in a way that was entirely foreign to me. They’re not all set in high school, but they seem like they are. 

But now there’s Marry Me. It almost had me at the casting alone. I mean, Jennifer Lopez? Is there a fiftysomething woman out there who is not cheering the fact that she dumped fiance Alex Rodriguez – presumably because the text messages he sent to another woman came to light – and then took up with the man she had once been engaged to when she was in her 30s – Ben Affleck? Jennifer Lopez is #Goals, and that’s even before you google the photos of her on her 52nd birthday in a print bikini on a yacht. 

If that’s not enough, J. Lo is paired with Owen Wilson, who is perfectly imperfect in a way that makes him seem attainable (god help every woman who’s still waiting for their George Clooney) and his character is a maths teacher, but in a sexy way. In an art-mirroring-life moment, Lopez’s character Kat (a music sensation!) dumps her cheating fiancé – a star as big as she is, with whom she is set to exchange vows at the music concert of the year - and starts dating a regular guy in the ultimate F.U. 

The whole thing unfolds sweetly, with strong supporting roles: Sarah Silverman as Wilson’s colleague who wisecracks her way through every scene she’s in, John Bradley (Game of Thrones) as Kat’s sympathetic manager and Chloe Coleman as Wilson’s stagefright-suffering daughter. Singer Maluma plays Kat’s feckless fiance Bastian, and his voice is like a sultry night spent in silk bedsheets. Lopez does plenty of singing, too, and you’ll be humming the theme song, Marry Me, for the rest of the week. 

With some exceptions, women don’t usually fare well in romantic comedies: they’re mooning and desperate or otherwise presented as the object of affection/obsession – there to be pursued, but without any real heft. 

---

““Women don’t usually fare well in romantic comedies: they’re mooning and desperate or otherwise presented as the object of affection/obsession – there to be pursued, but without any real heft.” ”

---

Actress and creative powerhouse Mindy Kaling had this to say about rom-coms in her memoir: “The genre has been so degraded in the past 20 years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity … I simply regard romantic comedies as a sub-genre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular world.” 

That’s not the case in Marry Me. Lopez’s Kat is empowered and strong and insightful. It’s light, but it’s incredibly pleasing. There is no weird manipulation involved: no one is pretending to be someone else in a convoluted plot that eventually conspires to bring our leads together. Kat’s not using this Regular Joe as a ploy; she says, instead, that what she’s done romantically has never worked for her before, so why not try doing the opposite? “They say if you want something different, you have to do something different,” she says. “Why not?” 

Aspects of her superstar life seem borrowed from reality: just like Kat, she probably does have to negotiate the line between delegating to her underlings and doing tasks on her own to gain personal independence. Stardom does put the famous into a protective bubble, where they often don’t have access to the mundane goings-on of everyday life. It is hard to be an observer in the world when you are constantly being observed. And in Notting Hill fashion, Marry Me does a nice job of imagining what happens when a celebrity tries to merge with a regular person.  

But what I loved more than anything was how Kat is nobody’s fool: like Lopez, she’s talented, smart and self-made. She has something to prove – she hasn’t been recognised in the industry for her music – but she tries to find her self-worth within, wearing a necklace which says “sing” on it, which signifies that the act of singing is the most important thing, rather than the rewards.

When she sees bullshit, she calls it out; she doesn’t take crap from anyone. And while she looks fabulous – after all, this is J.Lo in all her dewy-skinned glory – the main commentary about her looks is when Wilson tells her that she doesn’t need all the artifice; she’s beautiful without it.

If rom-coms look like this, I might start watching them again. 

---

Words_ Rachelle Unreich
Photos_ Supplied

---