I saw some people very critical of Jennifer Lopez’s visual album This Is Me…Now on Amazon, calling it a vanity project. Respectfully, I disagree: I thought it was beautifully crafted and worth every bit of JLo’s hefty millions deep funding she put into it for her art. But The Greatest Love Story Never Told? This is the vanity project B side JLo also gave Amazon as a double feature with This Is Me…Now. Only a JLo completist should watch this doc, who’s only purpose is to remind everyone for an hour and a half JLo is a person too.
For the uninitiated, Jennifer Lopez financed this whole new visual album, This Is Me…Now, herself, which she sold to Amazon to distribute it. To artistically make her vision, that means she spent a cool $20 million, not a small number. This doc puts the Bronx Queen front and center, showing how that money is money well spent to fulfill her creativity and artistic expression, with all sorts of famous people coming on to support her or question her, including hubby Ben Affleck and living legend Jane Fonda, among many others. And how, in the end, Jenny from the Block is willing to do the work to get the right people and get this album out in the world.
The Greatest Love Story Never Told is really about Jennifer Lopez’s love of herself and the process of making art. The problem with the documentary is, we already saw the finished product like 2 weeks ago, which shows how much she cares already. This extra 90 minutes flirts very liberally with celebrity hero worship, as JLo rebuffs all the “doubters” and “haters” around her to triumph in the end. But if you’re really listening, there’s really no stakes here, as I’m pretty sure Jennifer Lopez isn’t going to risk monetary ruin, and she’s too good with the media to risk public ruin either. Jenny from the Block has navigated all sorts of public persona issues so that there’s really nothing she can’t handle anymore. The only intrigue here are the people around her, who sometimes have truly interesting things to say about JLo. I’d argue for example this is the Ben Affleck more people should see, waxing beautifully and eloquently about the love of his life and the day to day complications of how that life intersects with his own and makes his life better. But these insights are few and far between, as we learn how hard it is to publicly get humiliated because you’re not great at falling in love as a celebrity or bummed you can’t get Ariana Grande to play a Zodiac sign. I don’t doubt Jennifer Lopez is an amazing artist, but I don’t exactly enjoy her telling us that she is for 90 minutes either.
Next time, Jennifer, stick to the visual albums. Those show, where a doc can only tell. And I hope you know by now that people love you right? Just cause the movie’s you star in might not be great, doesn’t mean people don’t like you for them. You rock; keep making your art. Just keep the self-indulgent making of doc’s to yourself next time, that’s all.