Second Act ** (2018, Jennifer Lopez, Vanessa Hudgens, Leah Remini, Treat Williams) – Movie Review

Jennifer Lopez is game and looks good, but director Peter Segal ‘s unrealistic, old-fashioned mix of the sassy, sexy and syrupy really just doesn’t work very well. Second Act (2018) tries to mix three different stories, which refuse to gel, but at least it is slick and busy and doesn’t get too boring,

Lopez plays Maya, a downtrodden long-time store worker, oppressed by men of course, who reinvents her life and her CV life story (ie she lies, and lies) and smugly shows Anderson Clarke (Treat Williams) and his Madison Avenue cosmetics company what street smarts can do by competing with his daughter Zoe (Vanessa Hudgens). OK, it’s OK to lie to loved ones, friends, bosses, colleagues and family if you look like Jennifer Lopez. Is that the message of the movie?

If Lopez is game and pleasant enough in a brisk and capable performance, Hudgens gets by in an appealingly low-key turn, and Milo Ventimiglia is entirely OK as Maya’s understandably frustrated boy friend Trey. The men’s parts in this old-style woman’s picture are terrible of course. Poor Treat Williams! Finally he gets a large co-starring role in a mainstream movie and there is nothing worthwhile for him to do, though even so he is fine.

But otherwise there is some very ragged support performing, with Leah Remini annoyingly brash and unfunny as Maya’s buddy Joan, Londoner Freddie Stroma  dreadful as Maya’s arrogant work nemesis and Alan Aisenberg and Charlyne Yi irritants as Maya’s new-found co-workers. Dave Foley, Larry Miller, Dierdre Friel and Lacretta are no fun either, though they think they are. All these actors are frustrated by having to played one-note characters, well caricatures actually. This is broad, untruthful comedy.

The unfunny crude sexual references and rude language belong in a different movie and are really at odds with the fairy-tale romantic comedy drama it seems to be.

One or twice, when it is actually funny, you actually find yourself quite liking Second Act. But when it goes for the big crowd-pleasing schmaltzy ending, it really is alienating, sending you home into the rain real grumpy.

Justin Zackham and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, the writers of Second Act, asked Pete Segal to tweak the screenplay’s comedic aspects. Is this the crude comedy? To be fair, there are laughs, and Second Act may be OK for a girls’ night out.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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