It hasn’t been the best of years for Jennifer Lopez, and her last-minute endorsement of Kamala Harris ending up for naught wasn’t the only misfire.
After that and a re-examination of her relationship with former boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs, a man now facing too many sexual misconduct criminal charges and lawsuits to count, her latest movie, “Unstoppable,” had a brief release in the United Kingdom in December.
If you’re in Merrie England and you missed it, you’ve missed it until it starts streaming: The film, despite palatable enough reviews, dropped out of cinemas after a week thanks to earning about as much money as Clarkson, Hammond and May used to pay for a junker during those cheap-car challenges on “Top Gear.”
“Unstoppable” is one of those real-life sports dramas which, according to a blurb, “centers around the life of wrestler Anthony Robles, who was born with one leg and won a national championship in 2011 while competing at Arizona State University.”
Other stars include Jharrel Jerome, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena and Don Cheadle — big names all. And a fat lot of good that did it.
According to the U.K. Daily Mail, its opening weekend pulled in a mere £3,112 — equivalent to just under $4,000.
Now, there is sort of a catch to this: According to the Daily Mail, they heard from a source — unplaced source including unnamed, mind you, so take it for what it’s worth — “that the film was only released in cinemas for one week in order to qualify for awards season, known as a qualifying run.”
Nevertheless, making under $4,000 in a “qualifying run” in a limited number of theaters and being the 55th most-watched film in the U.K. for the one week it was out is still particularly pathetic — and it’s not like this has been a good year for her on other fronts, whether commercially, culturally or politically.
In addition to “Unstoppable” being pulled from theaters after its one-week run (you’ll be able to miss it on Amazon Prime starting in January, worry you not), there was also the matter of her comeback album, “This Is Me … Now.”
Do you feel any sympathy at all for Lopez?
That album reached No. 38 on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 and No. 55 on the U.K. Albums Charts — both incredibly low placings, especially given the longer lifespans that legacy acts have nowadays.
For mere act of comparison, look at Fall Out Boy, a band that debuted four years after Lopez’s first album (2003 vs. 1999 for Lopez) and which has never been nearly as famous. I’d say both have retained their cultural relevance just as well over the years, which is to say they really haven’t. Their last studio album, “So Much (For) Stardust,” debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 last year.
Did you know that Fall Out Boy had a new album out last year, fellow millennials? Exactly. So yeah, that’s not a good sign for J-Lo.
Lopez also had to cancel her “This Is Me … Live” tour; divorce documents later revealed she’d split from Ben Affleck (again) the month prior. No “Gigli” to blame this time.
And then there was former boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs, whose long history of sexual misconduct claims finally caught up with him this year and landed him with numerous charges and lawsuits. On Friday, celebrity site InTouch reported, one of the men suing Combs will be calling Lopez as a witness in his $400 million lawsuit.
But apparently, what the Harris team thought would juice support among Latinos in the final week of the campaign was an emotional endorsement from Lopez in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The endorsement from Lopez, whose parents were born in Puerto Rico, came amidst a manufactured controversy regarding a joke told by a roast comedian about Puerto Rico at a Trump rally in New York City.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional, but you know what, we should be emotional,” Lopez said regarding the joke. “We should be upset. We should be scared and outraged. Our pain matters. We matter.”
Jennifer Lopez fights back tears while campaigning for Kamala Harris in Nevada:
“I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional, but you know what? We should be emotional. We should be upset. We should be scared and outraged. We should. Our pain matters. We matter.” pic.twitter.com/t0GgE5nEvT
— The Recount (@therecount) November 1, 2024
This was totally unhelpful. Not only did Harris lose Nevada handily — it was considered one of the easier swing states for her to carry among most pollsters — but Harris won 8 percent less of the Latino vote than Joe Biden did in 2020, according to NBC News exit polls.
The Bible says that God resists the proud. Maybe she’s not proud, but Lopez surely appears to be among their number — and she’s just been through a year filled with humiliation on a level most of us will never have to endure. The Democratic endorsement backfiring — indeed, either the nominee or the speaker thinking it would even matter — was just the icing on the cake.
Ah well. If the Oprah Winfrey/Kamala Harris gig was any indication, she probably got way more from that opportunity than she did from the cinema run of “Unstoppable” or from royalties on her new album.
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