Promising newcomer Jennifer Lopez

Do you know how old Jennifer Lopez is?

She's 56.

Do you know how long Jennifer Lopez has been famous?

About 30 years. Her first big movie, Money Train, came out in 1995, and Selena was two years after that. And this is to say nothing of her music career, which started a bit after that and is likely the thing that has made her the most famous. 

And yet Hoyts, in their incomparable wisdom, has seen it fit to put the following advertisement on my phone for Kiss of the Spider Woman, the remake of Hector Babenco's 1985 film starring Sonia Braga, Raul Julia and William Hurt:

Yes that describes her performance as "an extraordinary, star-making performance."

Like her or don't like her, it doesn't matter. If Jennifer Lopez is not already a star, then I don't know who is. 

Is this a movie: This is Me ... Now: A Love Story

This is the first in what I hope will be a periodic series in which I ask you, my reader, if something I have seen is a movie or not.

The new(ish) Jennifer Lopez vanity project This is Me ... Now: A Love Story was not on my radar until I heard them half-guffawing about it, half sort of copping to a guilty pleasure affection for it on a February episode of The Slate Culture Gabfest. (I've gotten behind on my podcast listening.)

The discussion didn't state the length of This is Me ... Now, but when I got home I discovered it was 66 minutes, which might barely meet my criteria for a movie, and one I could add to my 2024 rankings in progress since it was released on Amazon in February.

But I'm not sure if it ultimately qualifies, and that's where you come in. 

First I will state the arguments in favor of it being a movie:

1) It has movie-style closing credits, with a creatively designed graphic theme and an endless scrawl of people who worked on it. In fact, the scrawl is so endless that it rivals something like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which is both a point in its favor and a point against it (more on that in a minute).

2) It is a fictionalized and symbolic interpretation of Lopez' real struggles with finding the man of her dreams. It opens with her working in a factory where they are trying to keep a giant metal heart beating, some kind of steampunk fever dream. Lopez hired real actors (such as Jane Fonda) as well as real musicians (such as Post Malone) and real personalities outside of either acting or music (such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson) to portray roles in the "film" (it's a film even if it's not a movie, since there are also a thing called short films). 

3) It appears alongside other theatrical and streaming releases in one of my go-to resources to check the release dates of new movies, which is the Wikipedia page called "2024 in film" (or whatever year it happens to be). That page has sub pages that show the films released by individual countries. Under "American films" its shows a February 16th release date for the Lopez vehicle, two days after Madame Web and six days before Drive-Away Dolls, those other two obviously qualifying as feature films. (How This is Me ... Now did not make a Valentine's Day release, I have no idea.)

Now, against this being a movie:

1) Although the total running time is 66 minutes, the aforementioned endless crawl of credits starts at 53:30. (I went back and checked.) If the actual content of the movie stops well short of the hour mark, then we are getting into the dangerous territory of Taipei Suicide Story, the 2021 film I saw and loved through an online subscription to that year's Slamdance, but which I rejected for inclusion in that year's rankings because of its 45-minute running time. I have decided that old films that run 45 minutes -- the primary example being Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. -- will get included on my various movie lists because standard feature film length had not yet been codified back then. (Though 45 minutes is about my cutoff, as I can't see included a 20-minute film as a feature film.) But something that short today is a different matter. This Is Me ... Now is only a possibly insignificant amount longer than Taipei Suicide Story, though you do always factor in the credits to the length of the film. I just think how more modest credits would have brought the thing in under an hour, at which point I would have had a really hard time including it.

2) I have not seen Beyonce's Lemonade, though if I had, I feel like I would have considered This is Me to be some kind of answer to it. Not an answer to its content, but an answer to its place in the culture. Lopez is a classic attention seeker and she measures her own musical abilities in relation to genuine giants like Beyonce. Lopez may be just as famous as Beyonce, but no one -- even Lopez herself if she were being honest -- thinks of them as equivalent talents. Still, if Lopez saw that Lemonade was a movie made in support an album, you can see her saying "I can do that, too" and putting in $20 million of her own money to make it happen. (Yes, she did that.) The relevancy of the Lemonade comparison is that I never thought that project sounded like something I would rank if I had seen it that year -- though to be fair, IMDB refers to Lemonade as a "TV special" and has no such designation for the Lopez film.

3) And speaking of the Lemonade comparison, there is the nagging impression I have that This is Me is "just" a glorified music video. People have made long music videos before, testing the standard length of a single song by including lots of other plot material in addition to the music itself. ("Thriller" is the template for that, though other pretentious musicians have copied and expanded on the non-pretentious thing Michael Jackson was doing.) Then again, This Is Me ... Now is not a single song, but rather, something like eight from the new J-Lo album, each of which has about a three-minute showcase, comprising about half of the total running time -- but only half, it is probably useful to note. Half of it is definitely something else ... and whether it is guilty pleasure good, just plain bad, or a pathetic display of Lopez' needy inner self is up for debate.

So I am not going to assume you are actually going to comment on this post. You don't do it all that often. That's fine. We're not putting you under a microscope today.

But because of that, I should probably tell you where I'm leaning after writing all this stuff out. 

I noticed that in each of my three reasons to include it as a movie, I felt those reasons strongly and stated them unambiguously. In each of three reasons not to consider it a movie, I included a "yeah but." This tells me that not only do I want to include it, I can poke holes in my reasons not to.

So I probably will. But as you'll note if you look to the right -- fairly soon after I publish this, I should say -- I haven't yet. The last newly watched movie is still last Wednesday's Dial M for Murder, not the short J-Lo thingamabob I watched over two nights on Thursday and Friday. I've got to hurry up and make the choice, though, because I watched half of Five Nights at Freddy's on Sunday night, and I'd like to make up my mind before I finish that.

If we do want one final piece of circumstantial evidence that this is a movie, we need look no further than the fact that I did, in fact, have to break it up over two nights. Of course, I didn't have to -- but it turned out I was too tired when I started watching and I was nodding off nearly from the start. (Having some drinks earlier with my sister was a decisive factor.)

The circumstantial evidence does seem to be in the film's favor. I just wish I had a more firm love-it-or-hate-it take on it. There were some things I liked, some things I laughed at (because they were laugh lines) and some things I laughed at without that being the filmmakers' intention. 

Incidentally, if I do include it, that'll mean that the last week of May was dominated by Jennifer Lopez movies, this coming on the heels of my Atlas viewing. That one was for Netflix, so Lopez finds herself right in the middle of the streaming wars, doesn't she. 

The back-up career

I've noticed that I tend to be pretty snarky during my weekly new-release Friday post.

Not today. And I'm going to praise an unlikely person: Jennifer Lopez.

It's become the default position for many entertainment writers to discuss J-Lo in dismissive terms. She's certainly had her career lows, there's no doubt about that.

But like her former flame Ben Affleck, she seems to have disappeared from the spotlight for a couple years, and emerged more confident and likable. So likable, in fact, that I find myself sort of wanting to see The Back-up Plan.

I've always had a little soft spot for Lopez, but it's not for the reason you might think -- she's attractive, yes, but her famous derriere didn't contribute to this feeling about her. I guess I've tended to find her sort of charming and natural in her acting. She hasn't always given great performances -- far from it. But I feel like she has good instincts as an actor and can be really likable when she gets the right script.

It was her decision to become a diva that turned me against her.

I discussed this in one of my earliest posts, which you can find here, but I get kind of annoyed when actors who are having perfectly nice acting careers decide that they have to go for broke by becoming singers/rock stars. What, acting alone isn't good enough? It makes me think they're asking for too much. Just be satisfied with what you've got, which is already a lot more than most people have. The fact that she actively sought to make acting her back-up career curdled my affection for her.

True, J-Lo would have been just a mid-level ingenue, and not one of the most famous people in the world, if she had never embarked on a singing career. But from where I stand, I'd trade huge fame for mid-level fame and artistic credibility, any day.

I have to admit, the fact that I found her music pretty uninteresting certainly made it harder to applaud the decision. Even the catchy songs didn't really get my toes tapping.

Plus there's the fact that the beginning of her divahood was also the beginning of her decline. Perhaps that's a bit counterintuitive, because it was also the beginning of her ascent. But would any of us have been so quick to become annoyed with her if we weren't seeing her everywhere? As "just" an actress, we wouldn't have been seeing her everywhere.

But I think the key to my realization that I may want to give Jennifer Lopez a second chance was her appearance on Saturday Night Live back in February. I still wasn't thrilled with her song performances, but I thought the skits were excellent through and through. And it was Lopez' deft comic timing that I considered to be the key. Not only was she funny and natural, seeming to rely very little on her cue cards, but she played a variety of different roles, each of them well.

So, The Back-Up Plan. It's just a conventional romantic comedy/chick flick that tries to get a little edge by including poop jokes. I've read one review and heard another on the radio that confirmed as much.

But I will probably see it on video eventually anyway, because I think J-Lo may just bring a little of that SNL magic to this movie. And maybe, just maybe, it's the start of her rediscovering that acting, rather than singing, is her true calling.

The inherent worthiness of acting

(Note: I know your time is precious, and your desire to keep up with my blog may be overwhelmed if I update it too often. So I'm going to try not to post every day, or at least, I'll keep some of them shorter, like yesterday's. However, today I have no bosses in the office, three hours remaining in my workday, no one needing my help, and no desire to do any work. That spells blogging long-windedness.)

The other day, as I was cruising down Venice Boulevard (doesn't my LA lifestyle sound so glamorous?), I caught a billboard for Disney's Race to Witch Mountain, which is not due out for over a month. I looked up at the giant face of Dwayne Johnson -- otherwise known as "The Rock" -- and thought how proud I was of him.

He's not even using his wrestling name in quotation marks anymore. He's just plain old Dwayne Johnson, the movie star. And he's a pretty good movie star at that. I mean, you want Dwayne Johnson in your movie, don't you? Maybe not if you're making Jane Austen, but for your average popcorn film, Dwayne Johnson is a boon to your box office, and he seems like a pretty cool guy, too.

And that made me realize: I tend to think of acting as just about the most noble pursuit a person can make.

Or let me rephrase that: It's about the most noble pursuit a person who's already famous for another reason can make.

For reasons I can't quite identify, I always feel a small rush of pride when I learn that musicians, athletes, or (in this case) pro wrestlers decide they want to try their hand at acting. It's like I think they've seen the light, and decided to join the right team. And I know it's not just congratulating them on branching out. Because if it were, I wouldn't feel an equal and opposite sense of annoyance whenever an actor wants to become a musician. But I do.

Which, I realize, is patently ridiculous. Why in the world would I consider acting to be more noble than performing music? It could certainly be argued that music serves a much greater benefit to society than movies. While some people can (gasp!) do without watching movies, the love of music is pretty much universal. Have you ever heard a person say "I don't like music"? Nope, of course you haven't. But people who don't care for movies ... there are plenty of them. You probably even know one of these sorry bastards personally.

Another thing that is almost definitely true: Being a musician is harder than being an actor. You can get cast in a movie just by being particularly beautiful. And maybe, if you've watched a lot of movies, you can fake your way through to a decent performance, even if it's just using the cues of some other actor. Then maybe, if they give you enough chances, you'll actually learn enough to become a passable actor. But being a musician? That takes indisputable skill. If you're an actor (or just a normal beautiful person), you can't fake your way to perfecting an instrument or writing a song. You might be able to sing a little bit, but that's probably because you started in musical theater when you were five, like most other actors.

Yet despite all these ways that being a musician is both more challenging and perhaps more socially useful, I still feel somehow vindicated when a musician wants to become an actor. And somewhat betrayed when an actor wants to become a musician. (And yes, I know I started this post talking about Dwayne Johnson, who is not a musician. But considering that not many actors decide to become athletes, which is even that much harder than being a musician, or to become wrestlers, which would just be stupid, it's useful at this point to leave Mr. Johnson behind and concentrate on a larger theory).

For starters, there are a lot more success stories among musicians who have become actors than actors who have become musicians. The list of musicians who have received decent acting reviews is probably too long to tackle, but just off hand: Courtney Love, Tim McGraw, Ludacris, Ice Cube, Ice T, Common, Eminem, Dwight Yoakam, Mos Def, Cher (who actually won an Oscar), Jennifer Hudson (who also won an Oscar), Jon Bon Jovi, Tupac Shakur, Mandy Moore, Queen Latifah and Justin Timberlake ... I'm only stopping because I'm tired of racking my brain, and you get the point. (If you notice a lot of rappers on that list, it's no coincidence, because I believe most rappers have an innate ability to give a legitimate performance. Perhaps this is because they have the life experience to reach those emotional places that evade your average person. This is a longer post for another time.) Of course, I'm just naming modern references here. This tradition goes way back, to when Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley and Sammy Davis Jr. made the transition from crooning to discovering a character's motivation. In a way, you could say that the acting ranks have always received a steady flow of talent from the music world.

Of course, this is not to say that every singer can act. There are famous cases of the singer who wanted so badly to act, but just never did it well enough -- Sting, Madonna, Mick Jagger, Mariah Carey and Britney Spears are just a few.

But if you flip it around and try to chart the success of actors trying to make it as legitimate musicians, the numbers flip as well -- a small number of successes and a large number of laughable failures. For every Jack Black, a genuinely gifted musician, that exists out there, there are a half-dozen others who make us laugh at their pathetic attempts to become rock stars: Keanu Reeves, Jared Leto, Kevin Bacon, Bruce Willis, Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner, to name exactly a half-dozen. To say nothing of the would-be chanteuses: Scarlett Johansson, Lindsey Lohan, Minnie Driver, Hilary Duff, Milla Jovovich and Jennifer Love Hewitt, to name another half-dozen.

So I guess my perspective is: Why even bother? Why not just be happy with acting, rather than making a fool of yourself as a musician? Isn't acting good enough for you?

I remember the actress who first really brought me face to face with my own bias. You may know her better as "J. Lo." In fact, the only reason we all know Jennifer Lopez as "J. Lo" is because she embarked on a singing career. I venture to say she wouldn't have been a tenth as famous if she'd just remained an actress, someone who never knocked our socks off, but could do a nice little job in films like Out of Sight. So in a manner of speaking, J. Lo has been a smashing success as a musician.

The difference is, I no longer like her. I really did like her when she was "just" an actress, plucky and attractive, with a modest share of success that was likely to grow with time. But once she became a full-on diva, and directed all her attentions to grasping for the title of "world's most famous person," and churned out mindless pop albums that were barely even catchy, and started dating Puffy, and began making bad movies with Ben Affleck, she ruined herself. Yes, she was a million times more famous. And a million times less credible. And a million times less likeable.

So I guess it really comes down to the motivation for switching to the other side that makes the difference for me. If you are being cynical, you'd say that the primary motivation is always to become more famous, for both the singer becoming an actor and the actor becoming a singer. Their agents, their families, and everyone who ever advised them has emphasized that they are in the business of promoting their own brand. If you can be both the host and the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, bully for you. (In fact, there was a particularly weird SNL last fall when Tim McGraw hosted and Ludacris was the musical guest. Weird because rapper Ludacris is a more established actor than country singer McGraw, and had in fact done double duty himself as recently as 2006. If anything, you'd think the roles would have been reversed, except maybe the kids today aren't interested in McGraw's music.)

So let's look at secondary motivations, and this is where you'll see my personal biases. For the musician who wants to become an actor, it's about new challenges. It's about committing to grueling work schedules, about trying to develop the perspective of another person. It's about pushing your own limitations -- but in a realistic way in which you might actually succeed.

For the actor who wants to become a musician? It's about becoming a "rock star." It's about boozing and carousing and having a posse. It's about getting "rock star parking." After all, why do you think they call it "rock star parking" rather than "movie star parking"? Because it's the rock star who is worshipped like an icon, a god of cool, a stumbling, no-sense-making person who is allowed to be that way because he might just also be a genius. He might be the next John Lennon ... even if he started out as one of the guys in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

But then again, that might just be me. And I really enjoy watching the acting of a former pro wrestler, so what do I know?