Jennifer Lopez | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

When does the desire to remain relevant in Hollywood start to be a bad idea after a defined number of bad movies made – mostly on Netflix over x number of years? It seems that Jennifer Lopez’s career is more about volume and less about quality and over time, this will eventually ruin anyone’s potential to make any new movie.

The latest Netflix release, “Atlas” is a robot-AI movie that is mostly about the main character named Atlas, played by Lopez, sitting in a robot transport similar to the ones used for the movie “Avatar”. Her character has conversations with the robot computer voice named Smith and fights other robots, for reasons that are not defined well enough.

The critics are in agreement about how bad this film is, giving it a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 17%, with one of the better reviews from Susan Granger of the SSG Syndicate: “What was Jennifer Lopez thinking when she agreed to star in this absurdly formulaic sci-fi action adventure? Did she even bother to read the cliched, derivative script?” Not bothering to read the script seems to be a new trend in Hollywood, with the other trend being, “better to make something bad, rather than nothing at all”. If you’re as wealthy as Lopez, then why make all of these bad streaming movies? Why not wait for something great or hire a great screenwriter to write something specifically for you, and then make a good movie instead?

Volume should never be respected more than quality, in any profession. The well-known phrase, “overstaying your welcome” has a great deal of meaning in this situation. A good example of an actress who never makes a bad movie, and waits for a quality production is actress Michelle Williams, who has been nominated for 5 Oscars, all of them for outstanding movies.

I was also surprised to see the great actor Sterling K. Brown in this bad movie, once again going for the money and not waiting for quality. Simu Liu is also in this film, playing an android robot.

I agree with the very low Rotten Tomatoes ratings of only 17% and rate this movie a big pass.

Other than perhaps Doris Day, Jennifer Lopez now just might be the #1 female Rom Com (Romantic Comedy) actor of all time. If you see enough of her movies, you realize that when you see a new one, like “Marry Me”, they all pretty much seem the same. The only big difference this time around is that the story is so off the wall that it rides the line of unbelievability more than any of her other movies. Marry Me is one of those movies that anyone can realize the entire story just by seeing the movie Trailer. Two major celebrity singers are about to get married onstage, but Lopez notices that her soon to be husband has recently cheated on her, so she marries a random man in the audience, played by Owen Wilson, who is a high school math teacher. This is a completely stupid idea, that for some reason was greenlighted and funded into a film.

I thought overall the movie is not that bad, with some good moments including the appearance Sara Silverman as Owen Wilson’s friend, but the story is so predictable and boring in too many areas to say that this insane idea here was worth a try. The ratings on Rotten Tomatoes for Marry Me are an accurately low 57%. For Jennifer Lopez die hard fans, pay for a one month trial of Peacock and save the movie fee. For the rest of us, just see the trailer for this movie – and save the two hours of sitting through predictable mess.