Jennifer Lopez Says Yes to the Dress
A rom-com queen returns in "Shotgun Wedding," and this time, it's personal.
There’s a scene in Shotgun Wedding where Jennifer Lopez grabs a cake knife and shreds her bridal gown, repurposing tasteful, princess-y tulle into something you might glimpse on a high-fashion runway, or in the wardrobe archives of Mad Max: Fury Road.
The “After” is gritty yet glamorous, with a hem higher in the front than in the back that recalls the mullet-skirt trend from 2012 — imagine if Billy Ray Cyrus were a garment — but makes it functional. Excess fabric can’t slow down bride-to-be Darcy as she comes for the bad guys taking guests hostage at her tropical destination nuptials! She slips on a dead pirate’s combat boots, and she’s good to go, newly tougher, braver and bloodier. For Lopez and her alter ego, a gown isn’t just a gown, it is a means of asserting her agency in a dog-eat-dog world.
“That dress — it’s grown on me,” marvels the groom-to-be, played by a game Josh Duhamel.
“Thanks,” she deadpans. “I wanted something less traditional.”
So goes one of many fantastic screwball moments in the romantic action comedy, an Amazon Prime release directed by Jason Moore (Pitch Perfect) from Mark Hammer’s inspired script, which is equal turns nail-biting and sweet. It takes a couple bickering the day of their wedding — he wanted a big party, she wanted to keep it low-key — and hurls them into extraordinary unforeseen violence, but not the sort in which you’ve got to cover your eyes during the bloody parts and watch the safe ones through your fingers. Rather, the fighting scenes are consistently, cartoonishly watchable, like The Lost City, the Indiana Jones trilogy, and to pay further compliment, a Schwarzenegger crowd-pleaser circa 1990. The quirky supporting cast includes Jennifer Coolidge, chewing the scenery as she does, and Lenny Kravitz, spoofing the louche handsomeness that’s made the performer a parody of himself. Everyone is funny in Shotgun Wedding, even the villains.
As for Duhamel, whom I hadn’t watched onscreen since the 2004 rom-com Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! opposite Kate Bosworth, it’s a rare treat to see the appealing actor return as a proper leading man — sure, he’s 50 years old now, perhaps too old to play a minor-league baseball player past his prime, but who’s counting? And who cares? Duhamel knows a thing or two about Hollywood’s highs and lows, proving here that middle age remains an asset in a genre obsessed with youth. His character, Tom, battles a fragile self-confidence, a feeling that he’s not good enough, that he’s a replaceable tuxedoed topper on a conveyer belt of wedding cakes. With believable pathos, Duhamel plays these insecurities like a guy who’s earned them over time. Tom, inevitably, steps up to the plate, and when he does, we applaud the underdog’s courage under pressure. Fun fact: The younger, shinier Armie Hammer was originally slated for the role until his alleged cannibalism fetish (!) came to light and the industry exiled the disgraced star, who’s somewhere in the Caymans … selling time-shares?
As for J.Lo, she’s got ample chemistry with Duhamel, though I kept recasting Ben Affleck in the part. (I know.) The Dunkin Donuts spokesman would make an excellent Tom — that is, if he hadn’t wed J.Lo in real life, and if their last two-hander, 2003’s Gigli, never crashed and burned spectacularly. Lopez and Affleck, who were christened “Bennifer” amid their heady, notorious, 18-month, early-Aughts courtship, rose from the ashes anew and got hitched last July, and formerly eye-rolling bystanders cheered them on. The second coming of Bennifer dangled the hope that true love never dies, and second chances can and do happen outside the movies. Lopez knows that her personal brand is Love, and she’s well-aware that her offscreen romances are the stuff of tabloid dreams. But while she invites media attention (unlike the meet-cute legends Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts), this time around she seems invested in keeping Affleck out of her film projects. She saw how Gigli backfired big-time, doubtless hastening a broken engagement, and neither might want to blur those lines again.
Still, Lopez, who produced Shotgun Wedding, references her renewed devotion to Affleck in the streamable adventure. She and Duhamel go through the gauntlet and come out the other side, hands clasped, rings intact. (The only thing missing? A Dunkin cold brew.) Admit it: We love J.Lo in love, and answering demand, the savvy, multi-hyphenate, Bronx-born entertainer — still Jenny from the block (don’t be fooled by her rocks) — will always find new, creative ways to monetize public interest for commercial entertainment.
In the late 1990s, the ex-Fly Girl garnered critical acclaim headlining movies that showcased her immeasurable natural charisma. She really should have received an Oscar nomination for the tragic biopic Selena, and in the crime caper Out of Sight, she managed to equal George Clooney’s foxy charm through every frame. And yet, it was The Dress, not those roles, that propelled her fame to galactic heights. On February 23, 2000, Lopez showed up to the Grammy Awards wearing a scandalously low-cut, jungle-print Versace, an immediate international sensation. The following day, no one remembered who won which award; the water-cooler talk revolved around The Dress, the photographs boosting both Lopez and designer Donatella Versace as fashion icons. The former dated influential rapper-producer Sean Combs back then, and the duo appeared a solid though uneven match, he the mogul and she the arm candy.
The Dress flipped the balance of power in her favor, and come January 2001, J.Lo and Diddy called it quits after two years together. That month, she carried her first romantic comedy, The Wedding Planner, which opened No. 1 at the box office while her sophomore album, J.Lo, dominated the pop charts (and the halls of my college dorm). The turn of the Millennium was a rich era for rom-coms, and any determined leading lady worth her salt hoped to join the beloved ranks of Roberts, especially, whose Pretty Woman breakthrough paved the way for the icon’s double triumphs in the 2000 drama Erin Brockovich: A Best Actress Oscar and a historic $20 million payday that shattered the glass ceiling. Roberts was gorgeous, with that electric megawatt smile, but grounded in the real world: You could imagine her living next door. She was an Accidental Homecoming Queen type who craved normalcy and sometimes ignored the red carpet’s rules of grooming, as when she famously hit the 1999 premiere of Notting Hill with unshaven armpits. (Still punk rock.)
Lopez, more Liz Taylor than Lilith Fair, would never. Nor did she downplay or hide her ambition; showing it was risky, a guaranteed way to tank a female star’s Q Score. If this Alien Superstar regularly slayed in otherworldly gowns, nary a hair out of place, her liquid brown eyes on Roberts’ crown, how the heck could mainstream audiences relate? Who was going to buy J.Lo as just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her?
Well, a whole lot of us, it turns out. The Wedding Planner raked in $95 million worldwide, reframing Lopez the hapless third wheel and titular heroine whose perfectly manicured existence crumbles when she falls for a client’s future husband, a suave pediatrician (Matthew McConaughey). The movie, also a glorious love letter to my city of San Francisco, introduced Lopez’s strengths and value to the genre: Her ability to make challenging physical comedy seem effortless, and her vulnerability, which humanized the goddess and connected her directly to Everywoman, to me. She lowered her defenses and communicated passion and heartbreak through cinematic alter egos and song lyrics, through her smoldering concerts and often her head-turning wardrobe. She expressed herself, everywhere all at once, and in doing so, invited fans to do the same.
She followed up The Wedding Planner with the bland Maid in Manhattan, a massive success in 2002 that I still can’t stomach due to the poor casting of her co-star, Ralph Fiennes, a bone-chilling presence. After Gigli, a stain on her reputation, an ominous sign that moviegoers had grown tired of her, she played a winsome, lovelorn professional dancer in Shall We Dance?, one of my all-time favorites, though she was merely a vessel through which Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon rekindled the flame. (Please revisit this forgotten gem so we can discuss that swoony ending! It involves Gere, a single red rose, a department store that resembles the Marshall Field’s in Chicago where my grandmother once worked, and last but not least, Peter Gabriel’s luminous cover of “The Book of Love,” to which I walked down the aisle. OK, I’ll leave a link right here if you want to peek.)
In between The Wedding Planner and Shall We Dance?, Lopez married and divorced choreographer Cris Judd, almost married Affleck, then actually married salsa king Marc Anthony, whom she divorced 10 years later. By that time, superheroes and IP-fueled franchises had begun erasing the rom-com, among other Movies for Grownups, from theaters, and Lopez along with them. J.Lo, once firmly in the zeitgeist, was out of the loop. She pivoted to TV (judging American Idol, starring in a police procedural, Shades of Blue) and a Vegas residency, and made the occasional middling, mid-budget picture (The Boy Next Door, What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Second Act), climbing back to the center, rock by rock.
Hustlers marked a turning point for Lopez. She executive produced the 2019 dramedy, a critical and commercial splash that reminded the world who she was, and why it shouldn’t take her for granted. As Ramona, the ringleader among a group of strippers who drug and rob their Wall Street clientele, she was ruthless and maternal, a complicated mentor to the young women under her wing. And she absolutely nailed the best dialogue of any film that year: “This city, this whole country, is a strip club. You've got people tossing the money, and people doing the dance.” (You know what else is criminal, besides Ramona? The Academy robbing J.Lo of another Best Actress nod.)
In 2020 and 2021, respectively, she heated up the Super Bowl halftime show and crooned “This Land is Your Land” and “America, The Beautiful” at the Biden Inauguration, then-fiancé A-Rod in tow, happily basking in the Jenaissance. On the freezing Capitol steps, she wore a Chanel coat, blouse and sequined pants in Suffragette white, and was in full control of her body, her breath and, yes, her much-improved singing voice.
Then the market called, and it said rom-coms were back. The people wanted more of her. She set about producing Marry Me, which I thoroughly enjoyed, as well as Shotgun Wedding. She dropped A-Rod and reunited with Affleck, following her heart, thereby giving the people what they pretend they don’t want.
So far, Lopez has had three second acts and four husbands, and worn approximately 27,000 dresses, one more iconic than the rest. She neither craved a normal life or a normal dress. She wanted something less traditional, you know?
Hey there! Thank you so much for reading. This month, I’m finishing edits on No Crying in Baseball (wish me luck!), but plan to publish my guide to Nora Ephron’s New York City in the coming days — stay tuned and have a great rest of your week. Warmly, Erin
This was great! Erin is a rom-com guru!