{"id":1321244,"date":"2022-02-21T07:54:18","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T12:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1321244"},"modified":"2022-02-21T07:54:32","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T12:54:32","slug":"j-lo-rom-com-marry-me-is-a-distracting-movie-length-tiktok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/j-lo-rom-com-marry-me-is-a-distracting-movie-length-tiktok\/","title":{"rendered":"J. Lo Rom-Com \u2018Marry Me\u2019 Is A Distracting, Movie-Length TikTok"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fj-lo-rom-com-marry-me-is-a-distracting-movie-length-tiktok%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1321244&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/image-2022-02-18T152219.893-e1645215826565.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Jennifer Lopez\u2019s new rom-com, \u201cMarry Me,\u201d is neither romantic nor comical. Yet Forbes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/scottmendelson\/2022\/02\/10\/marry-me-review-jennifer-lopez-and-owen-wilson-maluma\/?sh=487205c2cc5b\">calls<\/a> the movie a return to old Hollywood classics, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s not remotely deconstructionist or subversive. It\u2019s a deeply old-fashioned star-driven rom-com that doesn\u2019t apologize for itself or spend its running time trying to be \u2018not your usual romantic comedy.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This could not be further from the truth.<\/p>\n<p>The plot is completely unrealistic, even by rom-com standards: Lopez plays Kat Valdez, a superstar musician who plans to marry her fianc\u00e9 and fellow singer Bastian on stage in front of 20 million fans as they perform their new hit single, \u201cMarry Me\u201d \u2014 until a social media leak reveals, moments before the wedding, that Bastian cheated on her. In a flash, Kat decides to marry a random audience member instead, and selects math teacher and single dad Charlie (Owen Wilson), whose personality can best be likened to that of a golden retriever.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"nothing-of-substance-here\">Nothing of Substance Here<\/h2>\n<p>While the movie may be full of romantic tropes and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2022\/feb\/10\/marry-me-review-jennifer-lopez-and-owen-wilson-are-odd-couple-in-bland-romcom-by-numbers\">unearned<\/a> allusions to classics like \u201cPretty Woman\u201d or \u201cWhen Harry Met Sally,\u201d it is also teeming with typical postmodern, feminist lingo. Kat\u2019s appalling performance of the song \u201cChurch\u201d features half-nude dancers wearing priest\u2019s collars and nun\u2019s veils (please do not allow your children to watch this movie). <\/p>\n<p>In another scene, Kat asks reporters, \u201cWhy do we need to wait for men to propose? Why is everything on his terms? No, I think it is time to shake things up. How about this? We pick the guy, we keep our name, and let him earn the right to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, the film does not explore any of these themes \u2014 traditional or inverted \u2014 in depth, because the frenzied, social-media-montage pace makes true reflection impossible. <\/p>\n<p>The movie script cannot properly be called dialogue; it is not a means of interaction and self-revelation between characters, but a collection of clich\u00e9s and soundbites. Two-thirds of the way through the film, I was shocked to realize I still had not witnessed a single meaningful conversation, just hurried exchanges or flashy montages.<\/p>\n<p>Unrealistic plot and meaningless dialogue aside, it is the use of social media that makes \u201cMarry Me\u201d feel like a dystopian shadow of true moviemaking. Many scenes depict not only the plot playing out in \u201cin real time\u201d but also the public\u2019s immediate reaction to it, through Instagram Live feeds and Snapchat, which occasionally pop up on the screen and remind us that everything in Kat\u2019s life is being watched, recorded, and commented upon by the entire world.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, the \u201creaction of the public\u201d becomes a driving force of the movie and a character in its own right. Kat and Charlie decide to stay married for three months \u201cuntil the public calms down\u201d after the Bastian scandal. Because of the constant global feedback that permeates the film, individual characters are never fully developed, and everyone is subject to the eerie monster of groupthink. <\/p>\n<p>Although this is not only true of \u201cMarry Me\u201d (I\u2019ve had similar reactions to other recent movies) it is frightening to see how each character seems more like an image or a blank identity than a human being. Characters are hardly ever dynamic unless they act collectively, within the sanctioning context of social media.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1960s Audrey Hepburn heist movie, \u201cHow to Steal a Million,\u201d Simon Dermott tells Nicole Bonnet that they will steal a \u201cCellini Venus\u201d statue from the museum by relying on \u201cnormal human reactions.\u201d Simon predicts ahead of time exactly how the security guards will react to each twist and turn of his plan of attack, and the result is a heist that doubles as a clever study in human psychology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMarry Me\u201d is the exact opposite. The reactions of the public often seem completely un-normal \u2014 as if they weren\u2019t real people at all, but impersonal puppets serving the convenience of the film producers.<\/p>\n<p>Each time Kat Valdez runs through an airport or steps into a school auditorium, no one in the crowd reacts the way I would have anticipated. I would expect people to rush up to her, screaming and clamoring for an autograph or a picture. Instead, everyone conveniently stays in place, quiets down, and immediately begins filming the situation on their iPhone (cue yet another social media montage).<\/p>\n<p>Is this an intentional move by the film producers, hoping to create a less chaotic and more \u201cscripted\u201d scene? Or have even our in-person interactions been so fundamentally changed by social media that such detached, impersonal reactions are in fact the new \u201cnormal\u201d? Either way, the result remains the same: The scene is no longer Kat\u2019s story, but the world\u2019s collective Snapchat story.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout the film, Charlie is the only character who seems uncomfortable with the emphasis on social media, calling it \u201ckind of a distorted reality,\u201d but this theme is glossed over and never allowed to develop. When Charlie challenges Kat to spend a few days without any social media, assistants, or cameramen filming her every move, she in turn challenges him to \u201cget on social media\u201d and use it as a tool to make his math classroom more interesting. <\/p>\n<p>Rather than exploring this juxtaposition in any meaningful way, however, these scenes devolve into fast-paced montages of Charlie and Kat enjoying a romantic, internet-free getaway, or Kat teaching Charlie\u2019s students how to dance while doing math problems. <\/p>\n<p>The movie is a glorified TikTok video. If that qualifies as \u201cdeeply old-fashioned,\u201d I am terrified for the future of the film industry \u2014 and our society.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Zsanna Bodor is a graduate of Hillsdale College, where she studied music and German literature. Born in Budapest, Zsanna grew up speaking Hungarian with her family. She enjoys long walks in the Midwest, cooking, philosophy, and performing quartet music with her three brothers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jennifer Lopez\u2019s new rom-com, \u201cMarry Me,\u201d is neither romantic nor comical. Yet Forbes calls the movie a return to old Hollywood classics, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s not remotely deconstructionist or subversive. It\u2019s &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1321244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1321244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1321244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1321244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1321244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}