Stream It: Marry Me

About:

Title: Marry Me

Released: 2022

Genre: 
• Romantic Comedy

Fix: Mediocre Movies, You Really Love Jennifer Lopez, You Can’t Sleep And Figured…This, Yeah, Sure
Platforms: Peacock

Official Summary:

Music superstars Kat Valdez and Bastian are getting married before a global audience of fans. But when Kat learns, seconds before her vows, that Bastian has been unfaithful, she decides to marry Charlie, a stranger in the crowd, instead.

FYA Summary:

I mean, the official summary has got it down pat, because aside from that initial set-up, there isn’t much else going on. Kat Valdez is basically the uncomplicated, fantasy mega-celebrity Jennifer Lopez probably believes she is, and Charlie is a divorced, middle-school math teacher with a twelve-year-old daughter. After the “wedding”, Kat decides in order to save some face she and Charlie can just do some casual interviews and Insta Lives to show they’re “trying” and amicably separate once the media forgets about it. But, of course, she’s swayed by his charming, normal person life where he attends things like Mathalons, and Charlie, despite himself, is taken in by her beauty and generosity and general J.Lo-ness.

I swear the entire setup reads like a celebrity fanfiction a la the kind I used to read back in my teen years about various boy band members. For this over-the-top, blind-date scenario to work, we needed to see some ELECTRIFYING chemistry between the leads to prove why they would both upend their lives to be together. Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, unfortunately, have negative chemistry. It was like watching two magnets repel off each other no matter how much you try to smush them together.

The first twenty minutes or so are like a celebrity fever dream as we indulge in Kat and Bastian’s lavish lifestyles and get exposition in the form of entertainment news commentary from, like, Hoda and Jimmy Fallon. Do celebrities really sit around constantly and watch news commentaries on their lives?? Quelle horreur.

Familiar Faces:

Jennifer Lopez as Katarina

(That dress!) Obvi I don’t know Jennifer personally, but I am going to assume she was drawn to this project because she could inject some real-life inspiration into her role. Kat is on her 4^th marriage and has never won a Grammy (just like Jennifer) or gotten that industry respect she craves, which ends up being a sticking point in the third act.

Owen Wilson as Charlie

I always liked Owen when I see him pop up in movies, but I wonder what he thought of this role. It felt like it was missing that Wilson charm, and that could be because Charlie was written as SUCH a major fuddy-duddy I have no clue why someone like Kat would want him. Plot points include: his flip phone and Kat’s team making fun of him for it; Kat’s team giving him an iPhone, which he says he’ll only use for “scheduling”; his favorite song is a sappy love song from Camelot that they dance to and it’s like the least sexy seduction song; he never uses social media and disapproves of all the endorsements Kat does; his daughter thinks he’s not very fun or spontaneous; and, we could go on.

Also, I’m not trying to be disparaging, but something was “off” for me in his general look – I swear at one point I thought he was morphing into Ellen DeGeneres with the hairstyle and movie makeup they were putting on him. He looked perfectly himself in last year’s Loki, so…it was very puzzling and distracting. However, it was nice to see that he and Lopez are the same age (51/52ish), so yay age-appropriate love interests!

Maluma as Bastian

As an official Old, I have zero clue if Maluma is household-name famous or not for his music, but for those of us out of the “know”, your first introduction to him may have been as the voice of Mariano from Encanto! Bastian doesn’t have much to do but be hot and sing and…Maluma does both things very well.

John Bradley as Colin

AKA Sam Tarly from Game of Thrones. He’s perfectly lovely as Kat’s surprisingly nice manager. I also read a recent article where he thanked Jennifer Lopez for hand-picking him for this role as he’s been struggling to break out of the fantasy-genre box casting agents have stuck him in. Cute.

Sarah Silverman as Parker

Sarah plays Charlie’s teacher friend whose girlfriend broke up with her before the concert, hence the reason he ended up being there that night. I usually find Sarah kind of over-the-top and not funny, but she was pretty low-key as the supportive BFF.

Couch-Sharing Capability: Required

My friend isn’t a Jennifer Lopez fan, yet I was texting her all the ridiculous moments I was noticing, and now she regrets not watching with me as we both enjoy commentating on bad movies more than the movie itself.

So, I’d strongly suggest you find a friend who love/hates cheesy movies too, because nothing bonds you more than gentle mockery, especially when Kat shows up on stage wearing this:

Singing lines from her hit song, “Church” like this:

Down on my knees, I’m fallin’ for you
You’ve opened my gates and showed me the truth
I’m born again, I’m feelin’ renewed
You showed me the way, I’m baptized in you

I’m puttin’ on my best, I’m puttin’ on my best
Like I’m in church, church, church
I’m callin’ for you now, I’m screamin’ out your name
And I wanna make you proud, got me feelin’ insane
So I’m gonna sing it out, it’s a new day
Like I’m in church, church, church, church

The sacrilege! /s

Recommended Level of Inebriation: Bubbly

Drink your prosecco and feel inferior that it’s not Dom Perignon. One of Kat’s fans bought her a STOVE as a wedding present. I mean. You and I will never attain that level of pomp.

Since it was late at night, I personally did not imbibe, but I did have an extra Snickers ice cream bar because after a cheesy “adults at a middle-school dance” montage, when it was suddenly clear that Kat and Charlie were about to take the “next step” in their physical relationship despite the unsexiness of it all, well, I needed it.

You could also make a drinking game out of the montages of Jennifer Lopez singing earnestly into a mic in the recording studio, or whenever the lyrics from Kat’s “hits” give up and begin repeating the song title instead of trying for fully formed sentences (JK, don’t do that, you’ll die. Though after hearing the phases “marry me”, “on my way to you”, and “church, church, church” repeat a million times in a row, you may want to anyway.).

Use of Your Streaming Subscription: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I blame the crappy NBC Olympic figure skating coverage on why I watched this—I was looking for a stream with commentary and better infographics (the Sports app has the whole thing unedited, which is nice and all, but as a layperson I can’t tell a lutz from a salchow, and I need guidance) but it doesn’t exist unless I watch live, so in my annoyance I turned to this instead. I’ve been known to enjoy a J.Lo rom-com of yesteryear a time or two. And while I didn’t exactly…enjoy this, I felt duty-bound to finish it and give you the 411 so you can make more informed choices than I. (Or so I could finally have someone to talk to about it in the comments. Tell me if you watched!!)