Where I Watched it: Amazon

English Audio Description Provided By Deluxe

Narrated By: Roy Samuelson

I would love to control Jennifer Lopez’s acting career. Like, feed me her scripts, and I’ll choose the projects. I know being seen and admired still at her age is an achievement. Running around doing a romcom on a tropical island a guy 17 years younger than her seemed like a catch, but then, that co-star had some problems with…. Normal stuff… like DM’s and cannibalism. So instead of trotting around with someone who reminds her audience how coveted of a starlet she still is… she got Josh Duhmael.

It’s not that I don’t like Duhmale, I just don’t think he’s ever been the first choice for a single role. in fact, this whole Yellowstone thing where McConaghey might replace Costner, I’m sure there’s been another conversation where someone asked the question “but what if McConaughey backs out?” To which the response was a production assistant with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, that contains a phone with a direct line to Josh Duhmael.

Emilio Estévez drops out of the show in which he’s the only remaining legacy character? The logical move would be to call in another legacy actor tied to the show. But no, they activated Duhmael protocol. The problem with doing that here, is that while Lopez is effortlessly charming as she has mastered the art of the romantic whatever, she has zero chemistry with Duhmael. And since this film starts at their wedding, what we get are two awkwardly matched people that the film tries to write off as wedding jitters, or calling him a groomzilla because their chemistry can be earned, they suppose?

Well, no. This is not The Lost City, where the appeal was sending two polar opposite characters into an adventure where they would learn more about each other and fall in love, like a new version of Romancing The Stone. Here, these two are already supposed to be in love. The best thing I could maybe assume, is that these two have been dating since high school, and for some reason waited until they were 50 to finally marry after a 30+ year relationship where they don’t actually like each other that much anymore. I felt nothing between these two. I felt more chemistry coming out of Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon’s almost non-existent shared screentime in Your Place Or Mine. Here, he would be more believable if this wasn’t their wedding, and instead of being the groom, he was perhaps the best man, and he was trapped in the jungle with her fighting pirates, and they slowly build some connection where she realizes at the end she’s marrying the wrong man. Then, the film might work.

Someone should have noticed these two were cold as ice, which is rather unusual for a Jennifer Lopez film of this ilk, because she’s made us believe that she can love anyone from Owen Wilson to Michael Vartan.

It is sad to see her not pursuing more serious and dramatic works after the praise she received for Hustlers, which is why she needs some career intervention. Oddly, she has the movie stolen from her by Jennifer Coolidge, who is once again typecast in this sexy airhead role she’s been making a career out of since Stifler had a mom. Fun fact, either they think Josh looks a lot younger than he is, or Coolidge looks older, because they are only eleven years apart. Duhmael and Coolidge are closer in age than Lopez and her original co-star Armie Hammer were.

Interestingly, Lopez’s parents are played by actors who are old enough to actually be her parents.

As far as the audio description goes, Roy does his typical best attempt at navigating what this film throws. I did notice several times when the description was clearly necessary, like the death of teh final villain, which was probably enough to earn this R rating. The movie makes it really easy in some regards, having each of the pirates wearing a ski mask with a different design on it, so they are easily trackable as the film chugs along. On the other hand, there are a ton of extra wedding guests that really aren’t doing anything, that we keep checking in on, and it is hard to follow who all those people are and why they are all there. That’s more of a fault of the script, for under developing the characters, and propagating the film with too many generic and dull characters to follow.

Normally, I’m a sucker for this kind of thing, but there’s a lot here that really doesn’t work. I wonder what this film would have looked like with Armie Hammer and whether or not that would have fixed the chemistry problem. Lopez shows up, but even her best efforts ultimately are defeated by Coolidge in a supporting role doing the exact same thing she’s always been doing. On Coolidge’s hand, if it ain’t broke… but for Lopez, looking at this film, maybe there’s something that needs a fix.

Final Grade: C