Marry Me is a 2022 American Romantic Comedy film directed by Kat Coiro and starring Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson and Maluma. It is loosely based on the webcomic of the same name, sharing the same initial premise but diverging considerably afterwards.
Katalina "Kat" Valdez (Lopez), an international pop superstar with a history of failed marriages, is busy preparing to tie the knot with her current fiancé and fellow musician Bastian (Maluma) during a highly-publicized, livestreamed concert in New York City.
Meanwhile, divorced math teacher Charlie Gilbert (Wilson) is trying to reconnect with his daughter Lou (Chloe Coleman), who has transferred to his school. Charlie's best friend and colleague Parker Debbs (Sarah Silverman) convinces him to take Lou to Kat and Bastian's marriage concert. At the concert, Parker asks Charlie to briefly hold her cardboard fan sign reading "Marry Me"—the title of Kat and Bastian's current hit duet.
Then, just before the vows, Kat finds out that Bastian is cheating on her. Seeing Charlie holding the sign in the crowd, she asks to marry him instead... and he agrees. As the two navigate a publicity marriage, they slowly fall in love.
John Bradley plays Kat's manager Colin and Michelle Buteau plays her assistant Melissa. Stephen Wallem, Jameela Jamil, and Utkarsh Ambudkar play minor roles.
The film was released theatrically and on Peacock on February 11, 2022. It is also accompanied by a soundtrack album featuring original songs by Lopez and Maluma.
Not to be confused with the 2010 miniseries starring Lucy Liu.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Job Change: In the source material, Guy (Charlie's basis) is a high school guidance counselor. Here he's a math teacher, and Parker is the guidance counselor. This changes the context of his relationship with Kat; while Guy's experience as a counselor helped him guide Kat through difficult times, the math club he advises is an embodiment of his mundane life compared to Kat's.
- Adam Westing: Kat's life derives heavily from Lopez's own, being a super-famous pop star with several endorsements and a highly public romantic life.
- Betty and Veronica: Kat is the Archie to her fellow high-rolling music superstar and ex-fiance Bastian (Veronica) and the affable, normal, aggressively-down-to-earth new love interest Charlie (Betty).
- Cool Teacher: Charlie is beloved by the students in his math club, who are all enthusiastic and participative. He becomes even cooler when his famous singer wife Kat drops by the school and hangs out with them.
- Crack Defeat: Basically applies when Lou loses a math competition because the buzzer goes off while she's giving the answer to the last question.
- Gay Best Friend: Like in the webcomic, Parker is the supplementary lesbian best friend to the straight male lead. While Charlie's publicity marriage to Kat is the subject of the film, we only hear about Parker's ex-girlfriend in dialogue, and she doesn't get a subplot of her own.
- Good Stepmother: When Kat meets Lou, she makes a genuine effort to bond with her, sharing an embarrassing moment from her own past to help Lou feel less ashamed of a case of stage fright and giving her some tips to deal with it based on Kat's own experience.
- Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: At a public event, Bastian approaches Kat, compliments her, and offers her a ride to Puerto Rico with him in Spanish. Neither Charlie nor the reporters present understand.
- High-School Dance: Charlie convinces Kat to chaperone a fall semiformal at the school instead of going to Puerto Rico.
- Leno Device: Kat and Bastian make a Talk Show Appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to discuss their Grammy nomination and relationship. Fallon also appears sporadically throughout the movie, mocking Kat and her failed marriages in his opening monologue.
- Marriage Before Romance: Charlie and Kat meet at her publicity wedding (he's the last-minute, substitute groom). They fall in love afterwards. They do briefly break up, but Kat ultimately proposes to Charlie again.
- Pair the Spares: The montage of couples' first meetings at the end reveal that Anikah, the Tonight Show stylist whom Bastian flirted with, started dating Colin, while Melissa hooked up with Manny, Charlie's rival math coach.
- Plot-Inciting Infidelity: Kat impulsively marries a complete stranger because she learned her fiancé was cheating on her minutes before they were supposed to get married.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: In-Universe, Charlie has no idea who uber-popular pop star Kat Valdez is, which ironically makes him suited to randomly marrying her because she's so used to having her entire life scrutinized.
- Race Lift: Kat and Bastian are visibly brown, Spanish-speaking people of Latin American descent here (played by the Puerto Rican-American JLo and the Colombian Maluma). Their counterparts in the source material were fair-skinned blondes with no indication of Hispanic ancestry.
- Rearrange the Song: In-Universe, Kat and Bastian's upbeat pop/R&B wedding anthem "Marry Me" has a "ballad version" that they planned to release after their public wedding. They instead perform it at Madison Square Garden after it is nominated for a Grammy.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Kat demonstrates a comparatively minor example of this when trying to get to Charlie and Lou after ending her interview on The Tonight Show; she forgot to bring her passport, tries to buy another passenger's ticket without knowing that's illegal, attempts to get champagne for the other passengers flying coach, doesn't know where to find "cars" (taxis) at the destination airport, and even ended up buying someone's coat because she ran out of the aforementioned interview in a fancy but impractical dress.
- Second Place Is for Winners: Lou loses a major math competition in the final round, but that same contest saw Kat return to her and Charlie's life, and Charlie assures Lou that he's proud of her for overcoming her stage fright and reminds her that she still got the question right.
- Uptown Girl: Being an internationally famous pop star, Kat is much wealthier than ordinary teacher Charlie, and her heavily-managed lifestyle gives him pause at first.
