Marry Me review: A forgettable rom-com wisp

It's not the stars that got small; it's the movies they keep putting them in. Still we hold out hope, even when the enduring, impossible luminosity of Jennifer Lopez — does she actually produce her own internal light source? — feels like the only reason to see Marry Me, a wan romantic comedy that leaves most cohesive ideas of character and storytelling at the altar, along with its original groom.

Marry Me (in theaters and streaming on Peacock Feb. 11) concocts the wispy, wistful fantasy of Katalina "Kat" Valdez (Lopez), a singer whose engagement to fellow pop star Bastian (Colombian superstar Maluma) is a feat of marketing symmetry: It isn't just love, it's great branding. But when Bastian's infidelity becomes public knowledge moments before their planned mid-concert wedding in front of a massive global audience, the shell-shocked bride-to-be plucks an unassuming school teacher and single dad named Charlie (Owen Wilson, the living embodiment of rumpled corduroy) from the crowd and says "You'll do."

Is this considered legally binding in the state of New York? Probably not, but they do have a few million witnesses, so the newlyweds decide for the sake of PR — or at least the rules of rom-com storytelling — to at least try to make it work. That news is far more thrilling for Charlie's tween daughter (Chloe Coleman) and his excitable coworker (Sarah Silverman, as herself essentially) than it is for Kat's team of managers and handlers (which includes Game of Thrones' John Bradley and a barely-there Michelle Buteau). Charlie himself — who vastly prefers math decathalons to red carpets, and doesn't even own a smartphone — objects at first, but no one's really listening to him anyway. So, like the two strangers with completely opposing lifestyles and interests they are, the pair proceed to fall incrementally in love.

The chemistry between Lopez and Wilson, as unlikely as it is, feels cautious but genuine, less like lightning than an electric blanket that two hurt people find enough room to huddle under together. But there's a chintzy small-screen feeling to the execution, as though the whole concept was sketched out in a Voicenote — a male Cinderella, but make it pop! — and then shot as quickly and cheaply as possible (the fact that it originated as a webcomic seems apt). Director Kat Coiro is actually mostly known for TV (Girls5Eva, Dead to Me), though the sharper elbows of those shows is hard to find in Marry Me's sanded-down sweetness. It doesn't help that the story pauses as often as it does for full musical numbers — not because the songs don't have hooks, but because they bring an already-slim plot to a dead stop.

The contact high of Lopez's wardrobe choices aside — every time a bell rings, a spangle gets its wings — there's a sense of something stickier and more intriguing underneath. Early on, Kat's manager reminds Charlie how unforgiving the world can be for a famous woman on the far side of 35, a fact that seems extremely relevant both to the story and the people playing it out on screen. Who wouldn't want to explore an honest reckoning of those things, with actors congenitally designed to make it charming? But that's not the tale Marry Me came here to tell. It's all cream puff, a featherweight fairytale too shiny and mild to attempt the better movie about midlife romance and second chances that might have been. Grade: C+

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