“Marry Me” Review: How to lose everything and find it overnight

​​“Marry Me” is a modern fairy tale about the love of a world-famous pop diva, and a modest mathematics teacher performed by Owen Wilson.

By Alua Karatay, Staff Writer

After the success of “Hustlers,” Jennifer Lopez returns to the world of melodramatic comedies, this time in the role of virtually herself: a bright and luxurious woman with an unsettled personal life.

Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson star in the 2022 film "Marry Me." (Photo Courtesy of Universal Pictures)

“Marry me” follows the famous singer Kat Valdez (Jennifer Lopez), whose life is watched by millions of followers on social networks around the world.The fictional pop star almost halts her own concert when she finds out that her future husband, the equally popular musician Bastian (Maluma), had an affair with his young assistant. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, Valdez decides to marry the first person she sees, who turns out to be a math teacher named Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson). What originally looked like a doomed relationship from the start turns into a real tale of fate.

From the start of the movie, it becomes clear what exactly Lopez was attracted to in “Marry Me” - the story of Valdez very much resembles the life of the singer herself. In “Marry Me,” Valdez solves her problems more radically-in front of the whole world. She performs at a wedding with one of the spectators of the concert, and then completely falls in love with him. Valdez falls into a conditional fairy tale, where the man of her dreams is not a beautiful prince, but a modest groom serving at court.

The problem is that the trends of the romantic comedy genre are no longer relevant. The story of Cinderella, even with a change in gender roles, will surprise few people at this point. A modern audience longs to see a romantic movie that matches the realities of audiences, as well as heroes with whom they could identify with.

“Marry Me” relies on archaic, dusty ideas about how true love knows no barriers and is born at first sight. In the film, no one is embarrassed by the obvious social inequality of Lopez and Wilson’s characters. Their completely different ways of life, views on the family and the institution of marriage are obvious. Such relationships can work out on a large screen or on the pages of a teenage novel, but are impossible in real life.

Probably for Lopez herself, fairy tale therapy really turned out to be useful. However, for the average audience, “Marry Me,” is nothing more than another unrealistic melodrama that promotes false ideas about what romantic relationships should be.