Faker Jennifer goes Made-up in Manhattan
J-LO AIMS HIGH AND PULLS A FEW STUNTS
JENNIFER Lopez goes back to the block in a gentle comedy drama echoing her rom-coms of the early 2000s.
Like Maid In Manhattan, Second Act features the former pop star as a New Yorker with ambitions beyond her station.
We meet Maya Vargas (Lopez) as she is being interviewed for the manager’s gig at the Queens superstore where she has been working for 15 years.
The 43-year-old is clearly the best person for the job.
She has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the stock, is best friends with all the customers and has invented a shopping app so revolutionary the film can’t explain how it could work.
But after her presentation, a mogul with criminally bad timing tells her the job has “minimum requirements” and introduces her to the dolt with a business degree who will be her new boss.
More heartache is waiting at home where her moustachioed live-in boyfriend (Milo Ventimiglia, inset) tells her to ditch her career ambitions and pop out a baby.
Maya doesn’t want to be a mum. As rational women can’t make this decision in a schmaltzy Hollywood comedy, we start looking around for signs of a tragic back-story. After dumping Mr Moustache, things turn around when she lands her dream job as a consultant at a posh Manhattan cosmetics firm, all thanks to a fake CV and forged certificates submitted by her godson. Will she fake it to make it and shake up the stuffy corporate world with her blue collar smarts? And will she go on a emotional journey that forces her to discover her maternal instincts and learn the value of being yourself ?
You really don’t need a business degree to know the answers. After cringey moments involving her painfully quirky pals from the store, the film finds its feet in Manhattan when Maya is put into an Apprenticestyle contest with Vanessa Hudgens’ high-flyer. Lopez is a likeable lead but isn’t much of a comic, so director Peter Segal (50 First Dates) surrounds her with funny side characters.
Leah Remini is well-cast as her loudmouth best friend but Charlyne Yi raises the biggest laughs as a geeky intern with a fear of heights – an entertaining if unlikely condition for someone who works on the top floor of a glass skyscraper. It’s that kind of film.