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‘Marry Me’ Review: Putting ‘I Do’ on the To-Do List

As a pop star who weds a math teacher in a stunt wedding, Jennifer Lopez is all business. But the original songs shine.

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‘Marry Me’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director kat coiro narrates a sequence from her film featuring jennifer lopez, owen wilson and maluma..

“Hi. I’m Kat Coiro, and I’m the director of Marry Me. At this point in the story, Kat Valdez, played by Jennifer Lopez, and Charlie Gilbert, played by Owen Wilson, have come together and had some really beautiful moments together, developed an intimacy and a closeness that they’re both feeling pretty good about when Bastian, played by Maluma, approaches Kat about playing at Madison Square Garden, and not playing just any song but playing a ballad version of ‘Marry Me,’ which is the song that they were going to play at their original public wedding. Charlie is very supportive of Kat and her career and wants to support her, but at the same time, he’s terrified at the idea of her and Bastian doing something that’s going to bring them very close.” “Crowd’s going bananas.” “I know.” “Well, I wouldn’t say bananas, but—” [MUSIC PLAYING] “(SINGING) I’d never seen forever. I’d never seen forever in the world. But now I’m looking down. I’m looking in inside.” “It was really important to me in this scene that it be the biggest event of the film, just from a spectacular point of view. We’ve spent all these little quiet, intimate moments with Kat— JLo— and Charlie— Owen— and now her big, gigantic, superstar life is rushing back into that world.” “(SINGING) Marry me. Marry me. Say yes. Marry me. Marry me. Say yes.” “And so having her rise up out of the floor onto the stage in front of 20,000 real fans was really important for just making Charlie feel like he could never be a part of that world, like he doesn’t fit in in an elemental way.” “(SINGING) They never— no, they never. This forever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And nobody do it better, better, better.” “We were shooting the film on a budget, and we did not have within our means the ability to shoot in a big arena. And it just so happened that Maluma was doing a concert at Madison Square Garden during the week of our prep for the film, and so we worked with his team and asked if we could basically piggyback on his concert to make this sequence come together. So the way it ended up working was while they were loading in, we took our cameras and went into the empty Madison Square Garden and filmed Jennifer and Maluma performing the song. And then when his concert went underway, at one point in the middle, you know, he put on his Bastian costume, and we had Jennifer rise up out of the stage, and we had our steadicams on the stage with her. We had all our cameras in the audience. And so when you watch the film and you see the audience reacting, that is Maluma’s actual audience reacting to Jennifer’s surprising them. And we did it three times. Then they actually launched into a song together that was similar tempowise and similar choreographywise but was an existing song because we obviously couldn’t leak our song that early on. And so we filmed them singing this other song, and so we were able to use a combination of both what we filmed before the concert started and what we filmed during the concert.” [VOCALIZING] [APPLAUSE]

By Wesley Morris

Rarely are romantic comedies titled more desperately than “Marry Me.” There is something pleasing about the bluntness. And because it’s a command that involves Jennifer Lopez, we’re permitted to skate atop the movie’s despair. But the ice is thin. Lopez has rarely stayed emotionally still long enough to luxuriate in moods less emphatic than “I will” and “I do.” Her comedies argue for restlessness as a quest for true stability: The right man soothes her nerves, dispels her doubts, restores her worth. But none of those movies has been as point-blank as this new one, whose original source is a punky graphic novel .

The pop star she’s playing, Kat Valdez, has agreed to a stunt wedding during a live concert (and before a presumed online audience of 20 million) with her pop star boyfriend, Bastian. Within minutes of the ceremony, Kat discovers that he’s been messing around with one of her assistants but she decides to wed someone and picks the divorced dad (Owen Wilson) holding a “marry me” sign in the crowd. Lopez performs this choice so lifelessly yet with such automatic determination that it’s fair to classify the sign as a cue card.

This brand-new relationship is Kat’s way of mourning her suddenly old one. Introspection and grief never cross her mind. “Why do I pick the wrong guy?” is as inward as things get. Amazingly, the next day, she endorses sticking with the brand logic of the marriage while doing yoga in her soulless high-rise home. She couldn’t have selected a blander, less objectionable stranger for a husband than Charlie Gilbert. He teaches middle-school math, co-parents one of those only-in-a-movie preteens (she’s spunky yet unsure of herself) and speaks in Wilson’s drawling whine.

Charlie dislikes the demands of Kat’s celebrity. “Her entire life is sponsored,” he cries, upon watching her shoot a post for Vitamix. But he concedes to the arrangement because, it seems, the daughter (Chloe Coleman), a big Kat Valdez fan, will finally believe her dad likes fun. He never sits her down to talk about fun’s downsides. Does she know why he and her mom aren’t together? How aware is she that Kat’s been married three other times and that one of those marriages lasted for two days? It doesn’t matter because this movie vows to satisfy all involved parties.

Does “involved” include me? I just kept counting the missed opportunities. Once, at about the halfway point, Charlie bets Kat that she can’t give up her accouterments of affluence and live like, say, Jenny from the block . Yet what Kat requests in exchange is so … puny — for Charlie to open some social media accounts — that I hurt for her imagination. (That’s his daughter’s version of proof of life.) There’s a movie in that premise, nonetheless. Maybe even some stakes: Kat may yet discover where she keeps the wine glasses and how to properly use a Vitamix (they’re called lids, Kat.) And, online, Charlie might meet a woman who dreams of even more for him. And hopefully, Lopez would play her, too.

She has her moments as Kat. They’re mostly physical: mincing down a school hallway in formfitting, scarlet couture under a parka; uttering the word “Peoria” then appearing there, as if the mother ship abandoned her. Here is a star who’s been performing for so long that performance is all, as an actor, she knows. If Kat isn’t teaching Charlie’s math students how to dance in order to calm their pre-competition jitters, she’s luring them into singing one of her hits at a school formal. This is Lopez’s best mode, and she’s always known it.

But rather than indulge her stardom and its candy shell, the movie, which Kat Coiro directed from a screenplay credited to three writers, seems to apologize for them. Kat wishes for a kind of pedestrian normalcy, a common prayer of princesses in everything from the delight of “ Roman Holiday ” and “Notting Hill” to the despondence of “ Beyond the Lights ” and “Spencer.” “Marry Me,” though, has an awkward, translucent ply. Kat’s discography includes a catchy convolution whose chorus is “I am the love of, the love of my life.”

So many parallels exist between Lopez’s character and what, in reality, we know Lopez has withstood that the movie all but doubles as one of those brand-burnishing docu-selfies, right down to a crowd-pleasing retreat into the arms of a white suitor after someone charismatic and brown has let her down. The Colombian singer Maluma plays Bastian; he’s a bag of cuddles here, masquerading as a red flag. At some point, Kat even notes that she’s never been nominated for anything. (The happiest we see her in the whole movie is on Grammy nomination day.)

The original songs are the best things in the movie. Those, and the two or three scenes in which Sarah Silverman — as Charlie’s sidekick and, somehow, a school guidance counselor — appears to abandon a script that it pained me to watch her obey. The pain extends to Lopez. I spend her movies waiting for the moments in which she seems most relaxed and least forced, when the effort has fallen away and the person she’s playing is free to do and be and feel. “Marry Me” is a sad tale that’s too busy leaping from plot point to plot point for Lopez to express anything close to real. It tells a lot and shows nothing.

I keep referring to her and Kat as entertainers, which, of course, they are. But what Lopez performs here — what she’s frequently performing — is the business of entertainment. She’s the star as executive, and all she often lets us see is execution. (Kat’s truest friend is her manager, an efficient Englishman, whom John Bradley plays with persuasive concern.) Kat and Charlie don’t meet much of each other’s families. And the movie denies them any chance to explore the weirdness of this relationship. He’s something Kat must do — although not carnally, never that; we just get a morning after in which she’s long removed herself from his bed and is taking work calls. Which is fine. But don’t call this love when all we see is task management.

Marry Me Rated PG-13. Kisses, cunning, backup dancers in body suits with nuns’ habits. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters and streaming on Peacock .

Wesley Morris is a critic at large and the co-host, with Jenna Wortham, of the culture podcast “Still Processing.” He has won two Pulitzer Prizes for criticism, including in 2021 for a set of essays that explored the intersection of race and pop culture. More about Wesley Morris

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Marry Me Reviews

The cast radiates star power with an energy that I haven’t seen in a long time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 22, 2024

While the story feels like one we have hear before, the charisma of Owen and star quality of JLO make it an enjoyable throwback to rom-com glory.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

The PERFECT Movie to see this Valentines Day. Jennifer Lopez & Owen Wilson ignite the screen with such a cute passion that you can’t help but enjoy the movie. It’s silly, it’s funny, & it might even be formulaic… but you knew that going in already.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Unlike the charisma of past Lopez love interests (Matthew McConaughey, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Vartan), Owen Wilson just doesn’t have what it takes to be a leading man in this genre.

In the end, it’s not the slightly fantastical plot of marrying a stranger in the crowd that is Marry Me’s downfall, but rather the lack of humanity that brings the larger-than-life down to earth.

Marry Me focuses on the believable perils of a renowned person’s life, and while it’s too on the nose at times, it still feels incredibly authentic, which could very well be due to the heart Lopez always brings to the roles she’s embodying.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2023

Kat Coiro’s film’s sole purpose is to promote Lopez and Maluma’s album. This isn’t so much a film as an utterly charmless infomercial.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Jan 4, 2023

Marry Me is such a naturally sweet film, that has great balance of romance and comedy. It ask real questions about your perspective on love and how social media can alter your perception of what is acceptable for love. JLo and Owen Wilson are cute in this

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 26, 2022

As pleasing and cute as “Marry Me” definitely is, it also falls prey to a few major issues in Lopez’s church of rom-com.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2022

Lopez and Wilson may not be the most obvious on-screen couple. But both deserve a ton of credit for what they manage to do in “Marry Me”. They take this utterly ridiculous concept from a mostly formulaic and predictable movie and actually make us care.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 16, 2022

Marry Me is a sweet little charmer of a film that left me feeling a certain way... so romantic, in fact, that I'm feeling all propose-y. Mitch, love of my life and partner of 14 years, father of my dog, will you marry me?

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 28, 2022

Director Kat Coiro does wonders in the concert moments, making you feel like you’re in the room.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 10, 2022

In terms of putting smiles on dials and lovey-dovey thoughts in heads, the mission is well and truly accomplished here.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 19, 2022

The cast creates a kind of festive noise that distracts from the plot limitations and average mise-en-scène. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 18, 2022

Completely formulaic. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 16, 2022

Conventional, yet entertaining and charismatic. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 13, 2022

An old school rom-com with a ridiculous premise but in a new Universal Pictures Home Entertainment blu-ray release which includes everything you ever wanted to know about 'Marry Me' but were afraid to ask.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 10, 2022

Lopez and Wilson are fine, but so much attention is paid to the worst aspects of social media that one will want to take a shower post-viewing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 9, 2022

I'm reminded why J-Lo is the queen of Rom-Coms. A look at ageism, social media, and gender norms with some conventional tropes that are well executed. Thoroughly enjoyed the costumes and songs!

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 4, 2022

It's weird to be living in a time where a movie like "Marry Me" doesn't warrant a recommendation but you desperately want it to succeed.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 31, 2022

Cast & crew
User reviews

Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, and Maluma in Marry Me (2022)

Music superstars Kat Valdez and Bastian are getting married before a global audience of fans. But when Kat learns, seconds before her vows, that Bastian has been unfaithful, she instead deci... Read all Music superstars Kat Valdez and Bastian are getting married before a global audience of fans. But when Kat learns, seconds before her vows, that Bastian has been unfaithful, she instead decides to marry Charlie, a stranger in the crowd. Music superstars Kat Valdez and Bastian are getting married before a global audience of fans. But when Kat learns, seconds before her vows, that Bastian has been unfaithful, she instead decides to marry Charlie, a stranger in the crowd.

John Rogers
Tami Sagher
Harper Dill
Jennifer Lopez
Owen Wilson
530 User reviews
181 Critic reviews
51 Metascore
2 wins & 4 nominations

Top cast 99+

Not George (Spencer)

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

Trivia Jennifer Lopez 's son Max Muñiz makes his film debut in this movie, as a student at the Mathalon competition.
Goofs Kat's manager Colin tells her that he'll get Charlie to sign an NDA to undo the wedding. That would do nothing towards canceling the marriage; what he really needs is an annulment.

Charlie : Is this smart?

Kat : I think we left smart six weeks ago.

Crazy credits The closing credits contains a series of couples and the stories on how they met.
Connections Featured in Jennifer Lopez: On My Way (Lyric Version) (2021)
Soundtracks Marry Me (Kat & Bastian Duet) Written by Michael Pollack , Nick Sarazen (as Nicholas Sarazen), Livvi Franc (as Olivia Waithe), Maluma (as Juan Luis Londoño Arias), Edgar Barrera , Stefan Johnson , Jordan Johnson , German (as Oliver Peterhof) Produced by Monsters & Strangerz , Michael Pollack , Nick Sarazen Maluma appears courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment U.S. Latin LLC

User reviews 530

A really great cheesy romcom.

martimusross
Feb 9, 2022
How long is Marry Me? Powered by Alexa
February 11, 2022 (United States)
United States
Official Facebook
Official Instagram
Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York, USA (The scene overlooking the water the morning after Kat and Charlie spend the night together for the first time.)
Universal Pictures
Kung Fu Monkey Productions
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$23,000,000 (estimated)
$22,438,180
Feb 13, 2022
$50,541,093
Runtime 1 hour 52 minutes
Dolby Digital