Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Amazon Studios
If there’s one thing Jennifer Lopez needs you to be deeply aware of, it’s that she is a consummate career woman. Once she sets her mind on something, it’s going to happen, whether you like it or not—whether she likes it or not. None of us have any choice but to sit back and watch her spin.
This stalwart professionalism is the ethos surrounding the deluge of projects J.Lo has dropped onto the world as of late, which have landed with all of the subtlety of rose-scented napalm. The amuse-bouche, This Is Me…Now, is the first record Lopez has put out in a decade. She released it in tandem with an accompanying musical movie titled This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, which expands upon the album’s themes: love, self-actualization, and being really pretty even when you’re sad. The film hyped the world with just its trailer alone, and was a remarkable testament to just how much thematic content one pop star can dredge up out of romance. But the totally wacko, instantly lovable movie was just a drop in the bucket that is The Greatest Love Story Never Told (streaming Feb. 27 on Prime Video), our main course in the Great J.Lo Feast of 2024.
The Greatest Love Story Never Told is technically a companion piece to her first Prime Original, given that it’s a making-of documentary about This Is Me…Now: A Love Story. But this behind-the-scenes peek at J.Lo’s creative process is so much more than just a glorified episode of MTV’s Making the Video. The Greatest Love Story Never Told is a glowing shrine to narcissism and its many casualties, a truly admirable documentary about never giving up, no matter how many people tell you that you’re draining your bank account for no reason. It lets the audience in on all of the situations winked at in the musical movie, including Lopez’s intimate relationship with her husband Ben Affleck. While the film is certainly gossipy, the confluence of larger-than-life ambition and ego, which lurks in the details of every frame, is even more fascinating. The Greatest Love Story Never Told is a study of celebrity, and the drive that it takes to maintain it. It has no intention of humanizing its shining star, only reminding us of exactly why she has retained her wattage.