Photo: Jennifer Lopez faces new challenge after album failure? Jennifer Lopez is reportedly not recovering from the drop in her popularity anytime soon. As fans will know, the 43-year-old multihyphenate’s latest album This Is Me Now… with husband Ben Affleck, failed to impress fans. In a new chat with Femail, the PR expert Emily M. Auston weighed in on the songstress’ downfall, which allegedly began after she tied the knot with husband Ben Affleck. The expert even claimed that things have not been in Jennifer Lopez’s favour since the release of Super Bowl documentary, Halftime, in 2022. Emily’s observation of Jennifer Lopez’s behavior towards sharing the stage with Shakira during their performance seemed critical. She characterized Lopez’s attitude as uncompromising and complaining, suggesting that her grievances were poorly expressed and made her appear unlikable. It’s worth noting that this incident occurred in 2022, the same year Lopez married Ben Affleck, who was previously married to Jennifer Garner. Later in the conversation, the PR expert highlighted a significant challenge faced by stars like Lopez, which is maintaining longevity in their careers. The expert suggested that Lopez may struggle with staying power because she hasn’t effectively engaged with new fans and brought them along on her journey as her existing fan base has grown older. This lack of engagement with new audiences could hinder her ability to sustain her success over time.

J. Lo and Behold: Is She for Real?

“This Is Me … Now: A Love Story,” a movie built on her latest album, is a showcase for the exhausting, never-ending, hazardous work of being Jennifer Lopez.

Jennifer Lopez searches for romance, and herself, in her Amazon movie “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.”Credit…Prime, via Associated Press

Nobody who winds up at a “what’s the strangest moment in this new J. Lo thingy” contest should worry. There are no wrong answers.

The parts in which Fat Joe plays Dr. Melfi to Jennifer Lopez’s Tony Soprano bewilder as intensely as the too-many scenes in which Jane Fonda, Trevor Noah, Keke Palmer, Post Malone, Kim Petras and Neil deGrasse Tyson (to pick merely six of a dozen names) bickeringly represent the astrological signs. None of these people appears to have been on the set at the same time. The only performers persuasively sharing the screen are Jenifer Lewis and Jenifer Lewis, and that’s only because she’s doing Gemini.

A number about a quickie wedding is called “Midnight Trip to Vegas,” but the groom has already hand-delivered Lopez’s invitation. It’s “Midnight Trip to Vegas,” but first with a stop at what could be Westeros or Themyscira or “The Cell.” Least forgettable is the sight of our star, in a tank top and up to her neck in elbow warmers, riding a headache ball to squelch a power-plant disaster.

Lopez has titled these 53 minutes (and an additional 10-minute-plus credits sequence) “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.” She’s released it, on Amazon, alongside an album of new songs, a few of which provide grist for the visual component. The album is a so-so buffet of sounds that get called contemporary or urban: music that could have been produced at any point in the last 25 years, which isn’t the same as calling it timeless. Lopez has never been on any sort of cutting edge. She’s often where music just was; and that can leave her stranded the way she is here.

For “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story,” directed by Dave Meyers, she gives “just was” both frenetic cinematic accompaniment and her physical all. In addition to cowriting, Lopez goes out on a limb and takes the role of what can rightly be called “Me,” a husband-hunter jailed in such metaphorical music-video scenarios as “glass house” and “love factory.” In that second one, she and two dozen coveralled co-workers bang out some electrocuted, hydraulic choreography while the operation’s giant, once-malfunctioning heart sputters back to life and spews radioactive positivity. These are the only vaguely satisfying numbers. If the wishy-washy, parable-making and haywire everything else won’t cohere into true beauty or credible horror, then camp it is. Ladies and gentlemen: Jennifer Lopez and her Oppenheimer Dancers!

In the movie’s opening narration, Lopez tells of a Puerto Rican folk tale about two lovers whose doomed fates transform her into a rose and him into a hummingbird. Is he condemned to spend eternity locating the right flower? Which is Lopez in this fairy tale? Nobody knows — not Dr. Joe, not her Celebrity Zodiac, neither she (“I don’t even get me”) nor her gaggle of friends. Their concern about her divorces and remarriages occasions a lust-shaming intervention that sends her to Love Addicts Anonymous, where a Janet Jackson amount of chair-dancing awaits.

You have to hand it to Jennifer Lopez. She’s not stingy. Here’s an entertainer determined to enter-freaking-tain. She’ll sing-dance-act her way through anything, even domestic abuse (the song “Rebound” takes place in that glass house) and spiritual defect (“Broken Like Me” is what goes down at L.A.A.). Her sort of generosity shouldn’t be taken for granted. Who else this famous would dare risk putting all of her alleged romantic problems out here like this, not as quirks but pathology? An entire musical number (set as a dream in her Bronx hometown) features Lopez ballading alongside the child actor playing her disgruntled, distressingly unwashed younger self, both of them passionately mouthing the lyrics to the unremarkable title song. You couldn’t tell these two they weren’t belting “The Circle of Life.”

Lopez doesn’t perform wink-wink. The persona is not a game. And thank God. She’s been turning our heads for 30 years. Yet the stained-glass treatment has eluded her. We’ve never had the stress of constantly assessing her inflating institutional value because the institutions, by and large, have ignored her. She attends award shows despite going conspicuously unawarded. She simply goes on. And because she doesn’t have to bear the culture-war crosses that Taylor Swift and Beyoncé do, you’d think she’d be carrying a lighter load.

Sometimes levity does achieve liftoff. Sometimes, Lopez can trick you into believing that life should be a parka hood with a mile of fur trim or a giant house with your nickname tiled all over in knockoff glamour. But if “This Is Me … Now” is to be believed, it’s a mansion for one. She has only ever wanted to give us what she’s wanted for herself yet never convincingly attained: comfort.

Lopez wants, needs, hungers, craves, desires, seeks, pines, wishes, dreams, hopes, believes, yearns, aches, hustles. You can see all of that in the hard violence of her dancing — nothing comes easy, nothing flows. It’s a lot of bursts and breaks. (Here, she even keeps in the sound of the dancer’s rustling fabric.) For 30 years she’s been at this: Mere entertainment might not be enough. Lopez has always seemed out to prove, rarely to savor, relish or bask. On the 23-year-old remix of her hit song “I’m Real,” Lopez coos that second word, transforming it from a declaration of fact to a matter of existential doubt.

“This Is Me … Now” could easily have been fashioned as a pure valentine to her current husband, Ben Affleck; the album makes room for one, “Dear Ben, Pt. II.” Instead, Affleck can be found barking under coats of makeup as a cable news troll. Why not get him — or some other star — right next to her in a good romantic drama instead of what Lopez can be seen doing here, curling up on a huge couch mouthing Barbra Streisand’s lines in “The Way We Were”? Streisand’s heart-wrenched seriousness could be Lopez’s. She shares the artistic self-determinism that Streisand embodies, but opts to treat that strength like karaoke.

In “This Is Me…Now,” Lopez’s relentless drive and commitment to her image seem to overshadow any sense of relief or joy. While her recent Dunkin’ ads with Affleck provided a glimpse of lightheartedness, this project appears to only add to her workload. Casting herself and other women in a love factory, Lopez portrays a sense of stress and uncertainty, particularly in her film roles. Unlike Tina Turner, who seamlessly translated her concert intensity to the screen, Lopez struggles to find a balance between intensity and peace. Even in her most memorable acting moments, such as her pole dance in “Hustlers,” there’s a sense of emotional turmoil masked by physical exertion. While Lopez’s dedication is admirable, it also feels overwhelming, resembling a relentless pursuit of perfection rather than genuine contentment.

An earlier version of this article misstated who directed “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.” It is Dave Meyers, not Jennifer Lopez. It also misstated the type of construction equipment Lopez rides in one of the scenes. It is a headache ball, not a wrecking ball.