“Marry Me” offers a simple love story carried by its leads.

By: Adam Beam

SUTV News

Valentine’s Day is always the perfect time of year to bundle up with your significant other and watch your favorite romantic comedies. In recent years, rom-coms have kept the same formula, but certainly switched up it’s scenarios. However, that hasn’t stopped some of the more familiar stories from sneaking through the cracks, like the recent “Marry Me” starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson.

Now, when I say a familiar story, I don’t so much mean the main plot, more the familiar story beats. The film centers around pop-star Cat Valdez (Jennifer Lopez) who is set to break the internet with a live concert that will culminate in the marriage between her and pop-star Bastian (Maluma). The pop-star is left in a difficult position when she discovers that her husband-to-be has been cheating on her with her assistant. In order to not be humiliated in front of the world, Valdez selects one stranger from the audience to marry instead, that stranger being down-to-earth math teacher, Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson). What should be just a publicity stunt, the two decide to let things play out, and of course there’s romance, drama, music, montages, all that good stuff.

So, this movie isn’t going to break any records, or blow anyone’s mind. Heck, there’s been plenty of films where a famous person falls in love with your average Joe or Jane. “Marry Me” does little to differentiate itself from other rom-coms, but the best way to describe this movie is “cute”. It’s a harmless little romp, it won’t change anyone’s life, but it’s really not trying to do that.

What helps this movie is the chemistry between our two leads. Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson are two very likable performers, so putting them together really benefits the movie overall. Of course, having Jennifer Lopez in your movie, you’re bound to have some songs for the soundtrack. For the most part they’re catchy and sweet, to be honest the weakest song in the movie is the one it’s named after.

Look, this movie is far from perfect, heck I don’t even know if I can call it a good movie. However, if you’re a fan of romantic comedies, you’ll probably get something out of this movie. I can’t really dock the movie too many points, since it knows what it is, and doesn’t try to be anything other than that. The biggest sin the movie commits is being nearly two hours long, and at points you can really feel that runtime. Despite this, I don’t regret seeing “Marry Me” and I’m sure you won’t either.