In keeping with her custom of living much of her life in public, Lopez’s Kat Valdez, a widely worshipped pop singer, is about to marry her fellow idol Bastian , in a vast stadium packed with fans, when she learns he has been cheating on her. Already on stage in a glittering extravagance of a wedding dress, she announces the ceremony is off.
Her gaze then falls on a bemused Charlie Gilbert , who has been dragged along to the concert by a close friend who is concerned he hasn’t been out much since his divorce. What’s more, he’s been cajoled into holding up a sign saying “marry me”. He is hauled on to the stage, a ceremony of sorts is performed and Kat and “some guy”, as he’s addressed by their “celebrant”, agree to wed.
This is Lopez’s first romcom in a decade, the film is out in time for Valentine’s Day, and it clearly means a lot to her. She’s come up with nine new songs for a soundtrack album. And she has been pushing the film in a meticulously orchestrated media campaign, doing her best to conflate art and real life as she hasIt all seemed too contrived, especially when a quote from one of these interviews turned up as a line of Kat’s dialogue. But gradually, prejudices disarmed, I started enjoying myself.
The script has adopted the Nora Ephron-Richard Curtis practice of backing up the leads with a group of confidantes who know their way around a joke, and Sarah Silverman gingers up Charlie’s life as his best pal, while John Bradley scores more laughs as Kat’s permanently flustered manager.