Marry Me (Kat Coiro, 2022)

[DarkImbecile]

Eager to continue my current streak of prestige art-house features, I took my wife for a Valentine's Weekend screening of Kat Coiro's Marry Me, the new Jennifer Lopez-Owen Wilson romantic comedy. There's not really much to say about the quality of the movie: it is exactly what it purports to be, and does it competently enough to have clearly worked for most of the people in our theater. Lopez is the best thing about it, bringing a ton of charm in valiant attempt to carry an absurd premise past the point where you bother worrying about whether the behavior onscreen is recognizably plausible or even makes a kind of baseline emotional sense. Not a good movie, but not painful or soul-deadening like certain other films I could mention.

However forgettable generally, the film was notable for two minor reasons:

• I have never, ever seen a movie with this much product placement. The bombardment is near constant and not subtle, with so many brands and specific products featured on screen, mentioned by name in the dialogue, or even becoming significant plot elements in and of themselves that I'd be surprised if the film didn't make back its entire production budget on sponsorships alone. Maybe this is what it takes these days to get a major studio to make a mid-budget live action movie featuring non-superpowered people over the age of 40, but yeesh, it was unrelenting.
• Speaking of unrelenting, it was amusing that this movie unintentionally did very effectively what so many mediocre dramas like 2017's The Circle have stumbled in attempting: portraying a culture consumed by social media as a vision of hell on earth. With so many narrative moments presented through livecasts, cat-eared filters, or split-screens with inane fandom commentary, Marry Me manages to subtly articulate the claustrophobic surveillance nightmare of modern celebrity culture so much more effectively just by trying to replicate the way many people experience reality now than any Black Mirror episode that tries to heighten it for the sake of making the same point. The film's script just kind of brushes over it, but once the Sauron's Eye of Instagram turns toward Owen Wilson's everyguy character, one's mind can't help but wander to the consequences this attention would have on a real person's job, children, and ability to function in society.

[cdnchris]

My wife likes Jennifer Lopez rom-coms (despite her not really being a fan of Lopez) and I've probably seen every single one, so it was inevitable that I would be taking her to see Marry Me as well. It's another one of those ones where Lopez pairs with some unlikely male lead, whether it be Matthew McConaughey or friggin' Ralph Fiennes, and this round it's Owen Wilson. I think it might take the very minor prize of being the best Lopez rom-com to date, despite its really stupid premise that I learned is based on a graphic novel series. As DarkImbecile says it mostly works because of Lopez, but I'll throw Wilson in there as well. Both are playing another version of their onscreen selves but it works and they have chemistry, and hey, I actually wanted to see them get together at the end. It gets some bonus points for having a few good laughs and more points for not dragging out the inevitable misunderstanding/insecurities/problem that could be solved if the characters just talked plot device that will put a wedge between the two in the last act, choosing instead to rush through that part of the film (thank fucking God!) and not play the "will they/won't they" card too much. And as DI also mentioned, the use of social media and how it's presented onscreen touches on that suffocating facet of celebrity life, one Wilson's character clearly has issues with, but despite it being a constant (that is cleverly framed at times) it always feels to be teasing at tackling that subject but never goes deeper than surface level. It could be also touched on in a more significant way when her ex, another singer, comes back into the picture, and they plan on performing on stage together again. THey show chemistry in their performance, which of course sets social media on fire with suspicions that the two will get together again. This isn't the case, Lopez's character not showing interest in him anymore, being all for show, and despite knowing this Wilson's insecurities get the best of him. Something interesting gets set up, but then all it's used for is that "wedge" device for the last act. So it ends up being one of those films that sets up some interesting things to say but then doesn't bother, I assume out of fear of alienating the target audience for this.

And yes, the product placement is ridiculous. Vitamix should have third billing after Wilson.

[DarkImbecile]

Just one more person trying to keep their partner happy away from a Marry Me thread!

This post brought to you by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

[Never Cursed]

Speaking of unrelenting, it was amusing that this movie unintentionally did very effectively what so many mediocre dramas like 2017's The Circle have stumbled in attempting: portraying a culture consumed by social media as a vision of hell on earth. With so many narrative moments presented through livecasts, cat-eared filters, or split-screens with inane fandom commentary, Marry Me manages to subtly articulate the claustrophobic surveillance nightmare of modern celebrity culture so much more effectively just by trying to replicate the way many people experience reality now than any Black Mirror episode that tries to heighten it for the sake of making the same point. The film's script just kind of brushes over it, but once the Sauron's Eye of Instagram turns toward Owen Wilson's everyguy character, one's mind can't help but wander to the consequences this attention would have on a real person's job, children, and ability to function in society.

As you say, most of this film is just prosaically fine, but wow does this element put the film over the top for me in its vicious sketch of the total exhaustion of being (or paying attention) to a superstar celebrity. To hone in on a related point, it's not just that there is a ridiculous amount of product placement, but it's also that this element is comprehensively and understandably integrated into the narrative and mise-en-scene. (There's a bit where Jennifer Lopez's legs glide into the right foreground of a shot that is visually identical to the introduction of a rack of Coach bags one scene earlier that made me burst out laughing - it's a supremely effective way to communicate how much the character has commodified herself.) Even though Lopez's character derives her glamour for her fame, the popstardom of this film is soul-deadening, a flattening of one's entire life experience (all the joys, pleasures, discomforts, passionate hatreds, heartbreaks, whatever) into uniformly distributed content maximized for engagement. Lopez and all her assistants speak the social-media-star jargon and regard this set of rules as iron-cast. I went into the film expecting a traditional princess-pauper sort of conflict between the leads (and worryingly, that's how a lot of the dialogue seems to frame this information) but in a way it almost becomes a narrative of limited liberation from economic exploitation for the Lopez character (though also, you should buy these blenders).

(Proposed thread title: Marry Me (Kat Coiro, 2022), sponsored by by Vitamix and Guess and Coach and Google and Instagram and TikTok and)

[domino harvey]

I’ll ask again what I already asked early today while looking at my Letterboxd feed, “Why is everyone watching this?”

[soundchaser]

I saw the trailer for it before Licorice Pizza and thought "that looks cute," and sometimes my cold, dead heart is stirred by the mid-budget rom-com. It does seem a genre that's of an age gone by.

(Which is not to say I've seen it yet.)

[brundlefly]

It's got J.Lo and was also streaming for free on Peacock opening weekend. Where perhaps you could suffer the pleasure of having in-film advertisements interrupted by out-of-film advertisements.

[Never Cursed]

I’ll ask again what I already asked early today while looking at my Letterboxd feed, “Why is everyone watching this?”

Number 1: I was bored and wanted to walk to the local AMC; Number 2: it's a theatrical rom-com in an age that has no use for them. I'm probably the outlier in that I went alone!

[soundchaser]

(Which is not to say I've seen it yet.)

This is no longer true.

I doubt this will stick with me very long, but it did make me laugh (probably unintentionally) a few times, and I’ve seen so few films this year that it’s currently on my Top 10 list by default. (That will almost certainly change in the next few months.)

It does a fantastic job of making Fallon look like an idiot, and I’m choosing to believe that was a deliberate move.