Review of Second Act (2018) by James R — 20 Jan 2019

What were you expecting from this review? This one has some positives, but overall man it misses the mark for the majority of the film. It's funny because director Peter Segal back in the day made some of the funniest movies I ever watched as a kid.

I'm talking about Naked Gun 33 1/2: The Final Insult (1994) and Tommy Boy (1995). Hell even in the 2000's I enjoyed his movies 50 First Dates (2004) & The Longest Yard (2005), but man has he fallen far from the path of even remotely holding a film together.

Second Act follows Maya (Jennifer Lopez) a 40 something year old that seems to have a relatively decent life. She's been an assistant manager at a local store and is aiming to become the store manager.

She's been dating her boyfriend Trey (Milo Ventimiglia) for the last three years and she has her best friend Joan (Leah Remini) always there by her side. But, alas this is all just a Maya trying her best to keep things together.

She doesn't get the new promotion, she's hiding a huge secret from Trey and she feels like she can't get ahead of anything in life. In comes her God son Dilly (Dalton Harrod) who recently just got into Stanford and is sort of a whiz (and is also Joan's son).

Dilly overhears Maya talking about her life, so he goes in a creates a Facebook, LinkedIn, and updates her resume and stretches the truth to the max (I mean he straight up lies like a mofo on it). This triggers peoples interest in Maya and soon enough she has an interview at a company run by Anderson Clarke (Treat Williams) and his daughter Zoe (Vanessa Hudgens).

She actually get's hired, but before long has to realize maybe this wasn't all worth it. Ok, so that's basically kinda the plot. There's a lot more to it surprisingly including a "twist" that I saw coming a mile away.

The film fits J Lo well. She's an incredibly likeable person still and even at the age of 49 is absolutely beautiful still. There just is no depth to this movie. It has so many moments where if they just followed through a bit more it would actually develop into a decent plot.

..and then they throw a wrench in it. There's so much randomness in this film that it just doesn't help. It doesn't know if it wants to be a romance (it barely has any), or a comedy, or a drama.

It seriously has more dramatic parts in it than I thought it would be and overall the tone of this film just doesn't understand what it is. I will say that like a typical rom com this one jumps just as much as one.

It has characters making moves or actions that move the story, but in this case it seems like we missed out on a scene or two to explain why the characters are like this. Yes I chuckled a few times during the film, but overall this one wasn't good.

I would dodge this one at all costs for the most part.