Nobody does romcoms quite like JLo. She's the queen of the genre, giving us all those essentials — the laughter and tears, the glamour, the heart, and the happy ending — and she delivers with such charisma that they’re hard to resist.
Despite forays into more dramatic roles, she’s never far away from another heartwarming romance and one of her most popular has landed on Netflix today [Sunday, August 10] in the US. Marry Me (2022) has the ultimate meet cute.
Lopez is Kat, a global singing sensation and half of a super-glam power couple. She and Puerto Rican superstar Bastian (Maluma) are getting married, but this will be no ordinary ceremony.
They’ll perform their latest hit, “Marry Me”, at Kat’s concert and exchange vows in front of countless fans, both at the venue and on numerous platforms around the world. That’s the plan, but it all goes out of the window when, seconds before the ceremony, Kat discovers Bastian has cheated with her assistant.
With her life crumbling in front of her, she looks into the audience and locks eyes with Charlie (Owen Wilson), a divorced maths teacher who’s been dragged along to the concert by his daughter.
And Kat decides to marry him there and then. Her split-second decision turns into romance, but coming from such different worlds, their future soon begins to look rocky...
![Marry Me - Official Trailer [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Ebv9_rNb5Ig/maxresdefault.jpg)
The ending is all-too-obvious, but the movie is smart enough to make their relationship burn appealingly slowly, so we’re given the chance to get to know the unlikely couple and get behind their efforts to make it work. The odds may be stacked against them, but we’re backing them all the way, so it’s tissues at the ready.
And audiences fell in love almost as heavily, giving it a heartwarming 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics weren’t quite as enthusiastic, but it’s since become a regular in their top five JLo romcoms.
It's a favorite all round. And it’s not hard to see why. The premise is sweet, the title track sticks in your memory, and the script gives Lopez an opportunity to flex her acting muscles with some heartfelt scenes about life in the public eye.
For somebody whose leading men have included Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes and Richard Gere, Owen Wilson’s ramshackle teacher is a change in style, but she has chemistry not just with him, but Maluma as well.
Aside from starring in romcoms and producing many of her own movies, Lopez has been steadily building a reputation as a dramatic actress. Marry Me was her first film since Hustlers (2019), which saw her play the brains behind a group of streetwise former strippers who decide to turn the tables on their sharp-suited clients.
Described by many as a "career best performance", it attracted some Oscar buzz but, when the nominations were announced, the Academy looked the other way, even though she received Golden Globe, SAG and Critics’ Choice nods.
More recently, she was back in another strong dramatic role, this time in Unstoppable (2024), playing the tower-of-strength mother in the true-life story of wrestler Anthony Robles.
But her squillions of romcom fans won’t have to wait too long to see her back where she belongs in Office Romance, which is due on Netflix sometime next year. This time she’s teamed with Brett Goldstein, and there's a heavy-hitting cast including Jodie Whittaker, Tony Hale, Edward James Olmos, and Bradley Whitford all in support.
She plays a company CEO who finds herself in danger of breaking her own company’s anti-fraternization policy – and, judging from the on-set photographs, the reason is pretty obvious. The actress whose name spells romcom paired with Ted Lasso’s grumpy Roy Kent? We can’t wait for that meet cute!
Marry Me is on Netflix in the US from 10 August and on Prime Video in the UK.
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