*This article contains spoilers for the movie “Marry Me”
Ads for the new movie with a star-studded cast, “Marry Me,” have flooded social media sites.
“Marry Me,” available for streaming on multiple platforms, is a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. This movie set itself up to be an easygoing, fun romcom, but it, unfortunately, fell short of those plans.
The movie is about a divorced father and math teacher, Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson), who takes his daughter, Lou Gilbert (Chloe Coleman), to a highly-anticipated concert. At this concert, two famous pop stars, Kat Valdez (Jennifer Lopez) and Bastian (Maluma), are having their wedding on stage. Seconds before Valdez is supposed to go on, she finds out that Bastian has been cheating on her. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, Valdez decides to marry Charlie Gilbert, who was holding his friend Parker Debbs’ (Sarah Silverman) sign that read: “Marry me.” The duration movie follows the pair navigating the concept of a relationship when she is extremely famous, he is a regular person, and neither of them knows one another.
The movie’s concept is honestly an even worse version of Netflix’s “He’s All That,” which came under fire after it came out for its terrible plot.
While romcoms are known for their unrealistic storylines, “Marry Me” takes the cake for unrealistic and in the worst way. The idea of an insanely famous superstar deciding to randomly marry an audience member at their concert and then falling in love over time feels like a teenager’s Wattpad novel and not a huge movie staring an award-winning singer and actress.
The characters in “Marry Me” don’t have anything special that makes them likable. The writers try to paint Charlie Gilbert as a hero who is there to save Valdez from the dangers of being famous and having social media.
At the beginning of the movie, Gilbert owns a flip phone and criticizes people who have iPhones and use them regularly. Valdez’s management team later gives him an iPhone, but he doesn’t like using it and tries to discourage Valdez from using hers. The writers clearly did this to try and make Charlie Gilbert the “savior” and make his character more loveable, but if anything, it did the opposite and made the audience dislike him.
Not only is the plot poorly done and the characters flawed, but the movie is also problematic.
Charlie Gilbert’s best friend, Debbs, truly embodies the gay best friend trope. This trope is seen in movies such as the classic “Mean Girls” with the character Damian. The point of the gay best friend trope is for the movie to get diversity points and make jokes at the queer community’s expense.
“Marry Me” makes multiple lesbian jokes about Debbs that may be funny to queer people, but to non-queer people, they perpetuate stereotypes and make it seem ok to make those jokes. This harmful trope just gives non-queer people the opportunity to continue judging and making fun of the LGBTQ+ community.
Not only is the trope damaging, but the actor who plays Debbs, Silverman, was cast in poor taste. The actress has a history of using slurs for queer people in her comedy. While she has formally apologized and moved past it, a role like this, that is written to perpetuate the stereotypes should have gone to an actual gay actor.
Overall, this movie had a lot of potential, considering the amount of money they put into advertising, I was hoping for something a lot better. The plot could have used more editing, so could the characters, and the casting leaves something to be desired. If you have free time on your hands, this movie isn’t worth watching.
