★★★★☆

Second Act cover

Most of you know that Jennifer Lopez movies aren’t high on my list of things to watch. I will usually watch one of the DVDs I own for the hundredth time rather than put one of her films on. It’s nothing personal, I just don’t have high hopes for them. I must also admit I tend to boycott the work of anyone who has worked with ‘Hanoi Jane’ as well.

COVID-19 shut off the supply of new movies to GameFly. I slowed down my watching of the new movies, instead watching ‘Person of Interest’ and ‘Andromeda’ for the tenth or twelfth time, watching the count in my queue drop to single digits. This lead to actually paying to watch a few titles a second time and to scrounging through what GameFly still had to offer putting some really questionable titles into the queue.

Things worked out well for Jennifer Lopez. I just watched the movie last night.Yeah, I know it is two years old, but GameFly isn’t polite enough to stock every movie and for some reason it has been stocking a lot of iffy ones instead of going out and getting the really good ones it didn’t have before. Like Tokien and a bunch of others.

I know what you are thinking; “With all of this bitching how could he possibly give it four stars?” “I’m reading this to find out about the movie, not his life!” Well, you have to have a frame of reference to understand the review for the first answer and as to the second, write your own review on your own blog the way you want, I don’t get paid to do this.

Leah Remini who plays Joan, the life long friend, basically stole this show. Wow! That girl can act! I wasn’t expecting to see that much talent in a movie I knew nothing about, other than it was a J. Lo film.

Charlyne Yi who plays Ariana, the quiet neurotic assistant with lots of personal quirks, especially a fear of heights was a treasure! I don’t care if the quiet nerdy librarian type with a mega kinky side is a trope, this girl really pulled it off. I also like that they wait until very near the end of the movie to drop the “We should probably have a safe word” line. You kind of know, or at least hope, that this will be the full-on trope once you realize it is the trope and this movie doesn’t disappoint.

What we have here is a celebration of casting and directing. When you put someone in charge of casting who takes the time to find the highly skilled actors for the bit roles, you can pull anything off. I’m not completely dissing J. Lo here. I always expect a middling acting job from her and that is exactly what makes this movie work. This movie couldn’t work with a Meryl Streep or Barbara Steisand level actress in the lead role. The movie would have fallen apart. It would have been “center heavy.” The “bit role” actors wouldn’t have put such an effort into it because their light cannot be seen when it is shining next to the 50,000 watt halogen bulb.

I’m not going to cheat you by telling you the plot or story line. I can tell you that if you watch it now, the movie is going to do a fine job of misdirecting you. Given the current political climate and news stories, your (at least my) mind was a long way down the wrong road when the major twist happened. I think you will enjoy the movie far more if you know nothing about it.

You see, we need middling actors. We also need a handful of really great actors who don’t have so much ego they can’t force themselves into an ensemble cast. That’s really what this movie is. We don’t find out much about the lives of the other characters, we find out “just enough.” The real focus is how they all interact. How all of the lives intertwine.

I do have to give one huge shout out to Dan Bucatinsky. His work as the MBA with “team building” exercises was spot on. He actually sounded (and acted) like sooooo many MBAs I’ve encountered in my consulting career. They have no idea how to motivate people so they resort to “team building exercises.” Here’s a clue for all of those schools. You can’t build a team with any team building exercise. A team forms in fire. Some just need a warm summer day’s heat and others (literally) need the heat of battle.

Add this movie to your rental list.