J.Lo’s Commercial for Her Album

In the summer of 2022, Netflix released “Halftime,” a glossy, shiny, and intermittently revelatory documentary focused on global icon Jennifer Lopez. That offering found unexpected (if highly unrelatable) pathos in the star’s distress over not being nominated for an Oscar for her (quite good) turn in “Hustlers.” Just twenty months later, and yet another streamer (in this case, Prime Video) is now releasing its own glossy, shiny, and intermittently revelatory film project focused on global icon Jennifer Lopez. The pathos, though? That’s mostly missing, but certainly not for lack of trying.

The project (it seems disingenuous to call this a “film” per se, even as its billed as “a narrative-driven cinematic odyssey,” which is, you know, a film) comes from the mind of Lopez herself (credited here with screenwriting and story by credits, shared with Matt Walton, Chris Shafer, and director and veteran music video maestro Dave Meyers), who also co-financed the effort. It’s clunkily titled (and punctuated) as “This Is Me…Now: A Love Story,” linking it inextricably with Lopez’s latest studio album (“This Is Me…Now,” itself a reference to her 2002 album “This Is Me…Then”), which just so happens to be dropping the same day as its “cinematic” component. Synergy!

The official synopsis for the project is filled with chestnuts that speak less to the content of “This Is Me…Now” and more to its ambition. It’s “steeped in…