STX Entertainment
Who longs for the days of yore, the 80s and 90s era of romantic comedies, your ‘Sleeplesses in Seattles’, your ‘Maids in Manhanttans’, your ‘This is how you make a movie, young lady’ string of movies that seemed to never end? Is it you, rewatching My Best Friend’s Wedding for the umpteenth time or perhaps it’s Jennifer Lopez herself? I don’t long for those movies, because most of them weren’t good. Earlier this year we already had the best rom-com in a while, Crazy Rich Asians, which elevated the medium. So it’s nothing new to try.
Second Act comes from prolific director Peter Segal (with a very long career) and mediocre writers Justin Zackham and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas. In the high-paced world of (randomly generated buzzy word) business, Maya (Jennifer Lopez) is an assistant manager of a supermarket who never graduated high school or went to college. She has fiery, stereotypical friends including loud-mouthed gal pal Joan (Leah Remini) and a whole lot of ideas.
One of these ideas is to integrate online shopping with the market to allow people to pick specific items, which has so much overhead I can’t see how it’d be profitable, and a hang-out coffee corner for customers and employees to chat and be friends. These ideas are enough so we must immediately understand that yes, Maya deserves the big promotion. But she’s overlooked by her boss to become simply a ‘right-hand’ to a clichéd, awkward white guy. It’s certainly reflective of the real world in a lot of ways, but it’s also tiresome.
Maya is thus sad and feels like she’s not going anywhere. Her loving boyfriend Trey (Milo Ventimiglia) wants a family but Maya isn’t ready, for reasons that are hinted at and explained much later. Maya just wants a chance and recognition for her hard work and talent. Joan’s high school son is a computer hacking genius (naturally) and forges a new identity (without Maya’s permission) to get her an interview at a high end cosmetics company.
Despite her lack of real experience in the field, she knows enough about the product line and retail to impress the boss, Anderson (Treat Williams), and his watchful daughter Zoe (Vanessa Hudgens, too good for this movie if we’re honest, because … well I’ll explain in a minute). Maya and Zoe end up in a competition for a new organic makeup replacement, Zoe for a slightly more organic version, Maya for a 100% organic one.
There are obvious choices and ‘why of course, why hasn’t anyone done tangerine before?’ simplistic concepts, and a boatload of unoriginal characters, like all of her coworkers, including snarky assistant Hildy (Annaleigh Ashford), nerdy and ‘quirky’ Ariana (Charlyne Yi), and nerdy and ‘quirky’ researcher Chase (Alan Aisenberg). Gee, I wonder which combination of those people will get together by the end of the movie.
This panoply of unoriginality gets upended when an expected connection is revealed between Zoe and Maya, and suddenly the movie has real depth, heart, and complexity. Where at first it’s simply Maya defrauding her way to success, now there are stakes (no spoilers). Vanessa Hudgens is so good here balancing lightness and emotion it reminds me of the sadly cancelled show Powerless where she was also very good. She gives real weight to the character that could easily be yet another caricature.
In terms of acting from others, Jennifer Lopez does well too, although she can’t help but show off her physique and includes many lines from other people commenting on her looks, which I suppose I can’t blame her for. Leah Remini is simply here as a comedic role, which she can do in her sleep. Her lines aren’t exactly good per se, but she knows how to deliver them.
At the end it all gets wrapped up neatly, as to be expected, and in a rush because the movie realized it was about to be over. This movie is mostly a very average sort of thing, with the ‘romance’ part of a rom-com barely there at all. Instead it’s about the career of Maya and how she wants to succeed, but there’s also the connection there with Zoe that becomes important.
The funny thing is that the rapport and acting between the two truly does elevate the highly average nature of the rest of the movie, but that really only makes me want to see them in a better movie.
Second Act has a run time of 1 hour 43 minutes and is rated PG-13 for some crude sexual references, and language.
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