Mary Me (2022)

Directed by: Kat Coiro | 113 minutes | comedy, music, romance | Actors: Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Maluma, John Bradley, Sarah Silverman, Chloe Coleman, Michelle Buteau, Khalil Middleton, Kat Cunning, Taliyah Whitaker, Diego Lucano, Brady Noon, Connor Noon, Ryan Foust, Léah Jiménez Zelaya, Tristan-Lee Edwards, Scarlett Earls, Olivia Chun, Jim Kaplan

In a world where the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the release of Cinderella’s film ‘Marry Me’ is a bit ill-timed. This somewhat free and modern translation of the classic fairy tale certainly has all the elements of the original story. A somewhat unhappy princess is taken to the prom only to fall in love with the prince. Only the sexes are reversed here. The princess in this case is a single father and math teacher; his fairy is his dean and the ball is a concert, where the prince has been replaced by a popular singer. Kat Coiro’s ‘Marry Me’ fails to convey the magic of the original story. A strong cast of good and well-known actors such as Owen Wilson, Jennifer Lopez and John Bradley (“Game of Thrones”) does not live up to expectations.

It is certainly not the singing skills of Jennifer Lopez. Not only her song Marry Me, but also her other original songs can easily appear in the charts. The fact that J-Lo has several decades of experience as an artist can be seen in the film, but that also makes it difficult to distinguish her from the character, Kat. With 80 million followers, she will say yes during a concert. After finding out in the nick of time that her fiancé has been cheating on her assistant, she spontaneously removes Charlie from the audience as a replacement. For her image, they will stay married for six months and as a thank you she donates the math program to his school.

Why the movie comes out at an unlucky time has to do with the message that money doesn’t buy happiness. It’s hard to empathize with someone who seems to have everything and can easily get what she doesn’t already have, which is a man. Kat lets it be known that she is unhappy in her world, because her fame makes it far from normal. Charlie makes her happy because he shows her reality. Moreover, he easily goes along with whatever happens to him, without giving the idea that her fortune does him anything. He even makes it clear that he absolutely does not want to take any money from her.

What makes you happy, according to the film? In a romantic movie, that can be nothing but love. This in itself is not wrong, but the romance in ‘Marry Me’ is only possible through the use of status and money. While the film clearly denies that money plays a role in the attraction of the two, a clear motive is hard to find. Where Charlie and Kat seem to find similarities is a sense of nostalgia. Both actors are in their fifties, as are their characters (they are at most slightly younger). Both seem to want to go back in time, when Charlie asks Kat out to the prom or lets Kat relive a childhood memory of Charlie.

“Marry Me” is actually a Cinderella story that begins at the end, the moment when Cinderella rides away with her prince in the carriage. The film shows the six months after this moment, which is not very exciting from a narrative point of view. After all, the two are already married and just like in the fairy tale, they only have to get to know each other. When it turns out that they get along quite well from the start, there are few obstacles standing in their way. A clashing schedule is easily turned around, a relationship is built up with a difficult daughter and personal ideologies are simply thrown overboard. Since wealth makes all this possible, the only conclusion one can draw from the film is that money does bring happiness.