One frosty night a few months ago, some Daily Arts Writers congregated within a dimly lit living room, ready to tackle the most monumental work of art since “The Iliad”: Jennifer Lopez’s “This Is Me…Now.” Some of us were baked, some of us were buzzed and some of us were just bored — you know the drill. Oh, and there was a Purdue basketball game on too, apparently? Whatever, we have collected our (kind of) inebriated thoughts in dramatic form below.
(The film opens with JLo riding a motorcycle across a waterlogged desert. Weird.)
Buzzed 1: Is this AI?
Bored 2: Motorcycle on water? Jesus parallel …
Baked 1: Why is it biblical? And why am I the only one paying attention?
Buzzed 2: Hold on … let me listen to my block.
Buzzed 1: You can tell she’s never written anything in her life.
Buzzed 3: Purdue only up four on Grambling State. Lol. I’ve seen some people hype Zach Edey up as a legit non-shooting backup big in the NBA à la Ivica Zubac or JaVale McGee, but I just don’t see it. His game is so incredibly reliant on the college rules for three-second violations that I think there’s going to be a real adjustment period if and when NBA refs start whistling him for those calls. I haven’t seen enough development from him as a shooter/short-roll playmaker to be confident in his ability to help a contender immediately, nor do I see him as a worthwhile development project for a rebuilding team given the league’s emphasis on speed and shooting at all positions.
Baked 1: This is “The Joker” for JLo.
Bored 2: Update: She is in a car crash. It’s a musical??? Erm … this is pretty weird guys …
Buzzed 3: She died. Movie over.
(JLo recovers and includes a dream song sequence inside a mechanical heart that runs on flower petals and extravagant dance numbers. We’re serious here.)
Bored 4: OSHA VIOLATION —> ELECTRIC HEART???
Baked 1: Why was a fucking dream sequence ended by a Fox News report? Bro, she’s cooking the mainstream media.
Buzzed 1: Can we publish something defamatory about JLo so she sues us? I don’t think JLo knows how to read.
Bored 3: Worst episode of “Black Mirror.”
(There’s a dance sequence to the song “Rebound” in a glass house as a metaphor for toxic relationships complete with a diverse group of background dancers.)
Bored 1: Speaking of rebounds, how’s Purdue doing?
Buzzed 1: This is a weird apartment building, she should move out.
Bored 4: TOXIC YURI?!?!?
Buzzed 1: I hope the movie editors got paid a lot of money for this.
(A roundtable of celebrities including Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Jane Fonda, Keke Palmer, Trevor Noah, Kim Petras, Post Malone, Sadhguru, Jay Shetty, Jennifer Lewis and Sofia Vergara as the zodiac appears in the sky to dissect JLo’s love life.)
Bored 1: The paycheck must have been good.
Buzzed 1: This is all just JLo being in love with herself.
Bored 2: Wait, I kind of love it though.
Buzzed 4: क्यूँ सधगुरु है
Buzzed 1: The cinematography kind of eats.
Buzzed 4: Why is Neil Degrasse Tyson in this? Clout chaser.
(Wedding dance sequence where JLo marries three different guys. In a row, and somehow all at once. In one of the weddings she wears a dress with a heart cut out directly below her waist.)
Bored 2: I’m so sorry Ms. Lo, you’re beautiful but that heart dress is the worst thing I’ve seen.
Bored 3: Not the pussy tube dress 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Bored 4: WHAT IS SHE WEARING WHAT IS THAT????
Buzzed 1: I wonder what she does for a living.
Bored 5: Thinking about what color umbrella I will require everyone to hold at my wedding.
Bored 3: Got the whole BBB singing “rebound rebound rebound”!!
Buzzed 1: I think if her career was just dancing we would like her more.
Buzzed 2: It’s so Nolan-esque right now.
(Back to the roundtable … again.)
Baked 1: How much money did they pay Liam DeGrasse Tyson and can he give it to me?
(Editor’s note: His name is Neil. Baked 1 did not realize that fact.)
(JLo’s friends break into her house and hold an intervention for her sex addiction. She arrives with a drunken security guard who she has been recently dating and lashes out at her friends. Also, one of her friends is named “The Realist.” Yeah.)
Bored 3: She was the baddest … He was The Realist …
Bored 1: He was crazy and she was crazier than him n God forgive whoever hurt his queen or whatever.
Bored 4: This is just like Oppenheimer fr.
Buzzed 1: I want to love myself as much as JLo loves herself.
Baked 1: I’m getting yelled at for spelling JLo wrong and I want it noted that misspelling it as JayLo is perfectly normal and Buzzed number whatever is incorrect.
Buzzed 4: Why is he mewing?
Baked 1: They are calling JayLo a sex addict and that shows just how much America hates sex.
Bored 3: SO WHY DO GOOD GIRLS 👼 LIKE BAD GUYS 👿 I’VE HAD THIS QUESTION ⁉️⁉️ FOR A REAL LONG TIME ⏰
Buzzed 2: Can you imagine being the dude that’s brought home to the sex addict intervention?
(JLo is back in therapy. Again.)
Buzzed 3: If your net worth is $400 million, why do you even need therapy?
Bored 4: This monologue sounds like “I Believe” from the “Book of Mormon.”
(Scene of JLo laying down in a massive mansion watching a Barbara Streisand movie.)
Baked 1: JayLo really is doing the Kardashian meme of people not understanding how rich people’s lives are hard.
Bored 3: Why is this house so damn big?? To symbolize the void … this is just like Bojack Horseman …
(Back to the roundtable of somehow omniscient yet powerless zodiac Gods. Keke Palmer just said “Amen.”)
Bored 1: Amen? How amen? You’re god!
Buzzed 4: Post Malone looks like he was at January 6th.
(Next music video sequence starts with a long monologue at a “Love Addicts Anonymous” meeting.)
Bored 3: NPC ass dialogue.
Bored 2: Gabbie Hanna has a music video just like this.
Bored 5: She could have had Gabbie Hanna play her in this.
Buzzed 1: EVERYONE SHUT UP! MUSICAL MASTERPIECE INCOMING!
Buzzed 2: This is so beautiful. I’m gonna cry.
Bored 5: Bored.
Bored 5: Diamonds on the soles of her shoes at a Love Addicts Anonymous meeting.
Buzzed 4: Christ allegory 🤯🤯🤯
Bored 1: Lisan Al Gaib!
(At this point, Buzzed 1 starts to cry. Abruptly stops.)
Buzzed 1: Wait, why are her shoes so ugly?
(JLo burns a letter inside her house while lounging next to her dog.)
Baked 1: Is her house burning down?
Buzzed 1: That dog should be freed by PETA.
Baked 1: This movie looks like a perfume ad or a smell commercial.
Buzzed 1: They used the amount of CGI you’d need for a Marvel movie.
Bored 1: Still looks better than “Ant Man.”
Buzzed 2: What’s the Purdue score? I haven’t checked in a while.
(JLo has a dream where she’s back in The Bronx. For some reason, it looks dystopian. She meets a young version of herself.)
Bored 4: Jenny’s from the block (Gotham).
Buzzed 3: Young JLo has officially crossed the SAG threshold for lines spoken I think.
Bored 5: If I started telling my therapist about my dreams she would think I had lost it.
Buzzed 4: THESE ARE DEMENTORS.
Buzzed 1: OPPENHEIMER SHOULD NOT HAVE WON! IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE JLO MOVIE!!
Bored 2: Guys, we just missed the emotional climax of the movie.
Buzzed 3: I have to say I’m pretty shocked with how poorly Nebraska fared in the tourney this year. I regrettably watched a lot of Big Ten basketball this year and they seemed like the team least likely to embarrass themselves in Illinois/Purdue fashion.
Bored 5: That whole kid was AI. Surely. We’ve come so far since Renesmee.
Baked 1: Title drop 3 and 4. And 5 and 6. 7. And it’s too much, it’s just a phrase in a song.
Bored 3: This is me now …
Buzzed 2: 9/11 mention.
Baked 1: This is just Hadestown but bad.
Bored 1: What if it zooms out and she’s in the North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.
Buzzed 4: Was JLo an English major?
Bored 1: She was a love major.
Baked 1: She’s going Super Saiyan.
Bored 2: I feel like whoever wrote this had to be on acid.
(JLo finds self-love and holds a wedding ceremony … for herself.)
Buzzed 1: SHE’S MARRYING HERSELF LIKE SUE SYLVESTER.
Bored 1: This is like the beginning of God of War 3. Kratos will rip her head off.
Baked 1: Fuck Nebraska and their fuck-ass loser team.
Bored 2: Fully thought she was replaced by Ariana Grande all of a sudden.
Buzzed 1: This was bad, I think. This was bad.
Baked 1: My bracket is screwed.
Bored 2: WHAT DO THE HUMMINGBIRDS MEAN? THEY’RE REAL ANIMALS, I PROMISE.
(JLo has a dance number in the rain where she discovers her, apparently, bottomless pit of self-love.)
Bored 1: If someone did this in Ann Arbor I would punch them.
Bored 5: What choreographer said “gallop?”
Baked 1: This is giving big “Skimbleshanks The Railway Cat” vibes.
(The movie, at long last, is over.)
Baked 1: OK, so that wasn’t a movie. Like, there was no plot or story, it was just songs. But also it was pretty inoffensive, just music videos with some famous people so no one hurt. Like she kinda just wasted her own money on it. Anyways, I’m gonna log it on Letterboxd now.
(Buzzed 1 puts on a cowboy hat.)
Buzzed 1: I love myself as much as JLo loves herself in this moment.
The post Baked Buzzed Bored: ‘This Is Me…Now’ appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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