The Greatest Love Story Never Told (2024)

The Greatest Love Story Never Told (2024)

In love and inspired, Jennifer Lopez mounts her most personal and ambitious project yet in this revealing behind-the-scenes documentary

7.0

Movie

United States of America
English
Documentary
2024
JASON B. BERGH
Ben Affleck, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Jane Fonda
87 min

TLDR

Get you a girl who dedicates an entire album, musical, and documentary to your relationship.

What it's about

Following the release of her musical movie This Is Me...Now, Jennifer Lopez bares all in this documentary that tracks the inspiration and process behind her most ambitious project yet.

The take

Jennifer Lopez believes that her latest album and its movie accompaniment, This Is Me…Now, are her magnum opus, so she gives the joint project her all. She funds, writes, produces, directs, and choreographs everything with the help of her team, which amusingly includes her lover and muse Ben Affleck. Whether or not it actually is her greatest work of all time doesn’t matter; it doesn’t even matter that people get it. What matters is that she creates it with the undivided fervor of an artist possessed with the knowledge that this is their last chance to make a mark. And it’s that energy that makes this documentary, which is a behind-the-scenes look at This Is Me…Now, so captivating. Lopez is in her element directing the movie-musical of her life. At 54 years old, she’s completely candid (sometimes, amusingly, to Affleck’s dismay) and abandons all need to conform to industry norms. She follows her heart first and her mind second, which explains why her project is as big-hearted and relatable as it is bonkers and all over the place. It’s a bit like The Disaster Artist in that way: watching Lopez’s creative chaos is far more interesting than the creation itself.

What stands out

I love how you can’t tell whether Affleck is for or against Lopez’s passion project. On the one hand, he’s famously media-shy and clearly annoyed that Lopez shared his intimate love letters for everyone to read (her entourage teasingly calls him “Pen Affleck”). But on the other hand, he is very supportive and involved, often going behind the camera and interviewing Lopez himself. If these two break up again, I don’t think I’m ever falling in love again.

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