It’s time to re-evaluate J.LO
Hustlers has given Jennifer Lopez the best reviews of her career — but then, she’s always been underestimated
WE’VE FALLEN PREY to one of the classic early 2000s pop blunders: we’ve all been fooled by the rocks that Jennifer Lopez has got. The star’s Oscar-buzzed role in Hustlers is a welcome reminder that Lopez is far from just tabloid fodder: she’s a hell of an actress.
Lopez’s first leading role and breakthrough performance was 1997’s Selena, playing the talented, tragic Tejano pop star, putting her on Hollywood’s radar and kickstarting her music career. In Out Of Sight (1998) she and George Clooney burned up the screen as they matched wits and charisma. But (as with Hustlers) her strength there is not only in sex appeal but in substance; her US marshal is a focussed, confident career woman who knows exactly what she wants, even when her desires conflict with her job. Lopez then became the first woman to have a simultaneous US number one album and film (respectively J.LO and The Wedding Planner, a performance and film underrated even by the standards of an unfairly derided genre). Unlike many of her contemporaries, especially in romcoms, Lopez often chose to play working-class characters and self-made women, and she has the screen presence to show their authority even when the world ignores it.
After that 2001 high point, she sometimes gave in to the temptation for frothy, commercial fare over showier acting roles (like her Wedding Planner
co-star, Matthew Mcconaughey). She was great in edgier films like The Cell,
but her mainstay was the romcom, and her career seemed to decline with the genre — though 2018’s Second Act
showed she’s still a cinema draw with the right comedic performance.
But how did we let her step back from serious films for this long? Where the heck were Hollywood’s biggest directors? Perhaps they were worried by all the focus on her private life. It’s a strange paradox of the film industry that star quality and acting talent must go hand-in-hand, but rarely make easy bedfellows. A public image doesn’t help when transforming chameleonically for a role, and Lopez is one of those who became famous for her fame as much as her films. Maybe it’s time to look past the pop-star dazzle and remind ourselves that — to misquote another lyric — she’s real.