FEBRUARY 25, 2022, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A13
Marry Me lacks rom-com originality
BY T.J REID
For the Keizertimes
Most boy-meets-girl rom-coms follow
the same basic structure: two people meet,
slowly fall in love, have a misunderstand-
ing that forces them apart, and then get
back together at the end just in time for
the credits. It’s a tried-and-true formula
that has been shown to work over and over
again, and this uniformity necessitates that
new releases in the subgenre have narra-
tive hooks in order to set them apart from
their brethren. What if the meeting hap-
pened because a famous pop star decides
on a whim to marry a random guy in the
audience to spite her unfaithful and equally
famous betrothed, for instance? This is the
hook of Marry Me, a Peacock original that
has very few unique things to off er other
than its bonkers premise.
Based on a graphic novel by the same
name (yes, really), Marry Me has romance,
a small dash of comedy, and very little orig-
inality. There’s really not much more to
the story than I described already, and the
fi lm leans heavily on the aforementioned
hook as well as the likeability of its leads,
Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, to make
up for it. As Lopez plays a pop star (not too
much of a stretch), there are a few original
songs that pad things out as well, some
decent (the ballad she writes for Wilson’s
character) and some a bit more irritating
(the titular track, which they will not let
you forget). The inevitable confl ict that
breaks up the string of fuzzy falling-in-love
scenes also feels a bit manufactured and
isn’t super convincing, as if the fi lmmak-
ers were not only fully aware of the basic
boy-meets-girl rom-com structure but were
also determined to follow it to the letter.
Or maybe they just realized that they were
already three-fourths of the way through
the fi lm and hadn’t introduced any actual
confl ict yet.
I never really laughed out loud
during Marry Me, which is a bit disappoint-
ing for a romantic comedy, and I can’t for
the life of me see what would have attracted
either of the stars to the script other than
the chance to have a few kissing scenes
with Jennifer Lopez or Owen Wilson. To
its credit, the script does try really hard to
be memorable and profound, constantly
requiring Lopez (and occasionally Wilson)
to drop what the writers probably thought
were insightful one-liners about every-
thing from self-reliance to the benefi ts of
social media, but the juggling of all of these
themes leads to a few balls being dropped
along the way.
Marry Me isn’t a bad fi lm. The warm
and fuzzy scenes feel warm and fuzzy, the
characters are likeable enough (shout-out
to Sarah Silverman as the best friend char-
acter, who I have not mentioned yet), and
any eyerolls are solidly contained to the
ludicrous proposal moment early on. It just
doesn’t do much of anything special and
is easily forgettable as a result. If you need
some comfort food in the form of a movie
you might as well watch something that
fi lls you up a little longer.
Marry Me is now available on Peacock.
Review
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