SECOND ACT: Too Many Subplots, But is it Enough?

Second Act has three main plotlines. The good news is I enjoyed all three of them. The bad news is I had to enjoy all three of them at once. From start to finish, Second Act is like a battle among three different kinds of movies. It’s your typical Cinderella story, starring Jennifer Lopez as the down-on-her-luck Maya who, through a white lie, finds success and learns what kind of person she really wants to be. But then it’s also a drama about family, your mistakes in life, and how that seeps into your relationships. And then it’s about the beauty industry and women in the workplace.

Either you’re gonna be bothered over the film’s lack of coherence and thematic focus, or you’re just not gonna care because it’s the holidays and you just want a film that’s warm, whose heart is in the right place.

The Big Killers – Narrative Coherence and Lack of Jokes

Like most comedies of the 2010s, Second Act makes the dangerous notion that comedies need to have multiple plotlines just in case the audience gets bored. The writers don’t seem to understand that the simpler the premise and situations, the better the film can be. There’s an entire plotline about a product development competition between two teams that brought back awful memories of The Internship. Everything Leah Remini does as the best-friend-matchmaker reminded me of Chelsea Handler in This Means War. There’s a terrible sequence that involves the song “Push It,” because it has no reason to exist other than to halt the plot so we can see a group of women dance.

It is here where I should point out that Second Act is really bad at being funny. A lot of the jokes come from people being awkward and weird. People laugh simply because a certain character has a quirk. It even has the same issue as The Meg did in how it treats its Asian characters. Almost none of the humor comes from clever writing, where timing is essential. I genuinely laughed probably three times. I may have been charmed by the film at times, but to say it’s funny is a stretch.

And then there’s a twist… ironically in the second act. Interestingly enough, the new movie Second Act becomes after the twist is a much more interesting story to me. But every single time I became invested in the stakes of that new story, the film jumps back to some other plotline I cared less about. It’s frustrating because if you were to isolate just the product competition plotline, it would’ve been a fun, fast-paced satire about the beauty industry and the relationship between corporations and regular consumers. If you were to isolate just the twist and all the plot points that are directly correlated to that twist, the film would’ve been a sweet, warm look at family and finding a home.

I must stress this again: I enjoyed all three plotlines in the film. But I kept getting bothered by them overlapping each other and stealing each other’s space.

The One Reason, If Any, to See it: JLo

If you’re a fan of Lopez, then go see this movie. Go see it, because I strongly believe Second Act brought the actress back to her classic charismatic roots. Despite the script designing a lot of contrivances and story tropes, it still knows how to set up Maya’s circumstances to get you to root for her. Even though she has the most experience working as a store manager, she never gets a promotion due to factors like never having a college degree. She’s clearly an underdog, and you feel for her situation. But Lopez treats the role with some form of grounded realism. She captures the guilt, anxiety, and confusion behind having to keep that white lie throughout her new job.

As long as you can get through the first 30 minutes, which seems to be so preoccupied with how sexy Lopez is for her age, you’ll be fine. Assisting Lopez is the sweet and dedicated Vanessa Hudgens as Zoe. She has just enough business sass and sugary graciousness to make you care about her situation as well. Even though the script itself doesn’t give Zoe that much room to work with, outside of genre clichés, Hudgens makes something special out of it.

It boggles my mind that she doesn’t seem to get that much big mainstream films. Has anyone seen Spring Breakers? Put Vanessa in more movies! The greatest strength in Second Act is, without a doubt, the duo chemistry between Lopez and Hudgens. It’s just a shame the film was never marketed to be about that, which ended up being a missed opportunity, if not a misleader.

Second Act: Not Bad but Not Necessary Either

There is a 50-minute great film inside the 100-minute long Second Act. Individually, scene to scene, Second Act has its highlights. But as a whole, the film simultaneously works and doesn’t work – the epitome of a mixed bag. The jokes barely landed, the plotlines kept crisscrossing one another, and a lot of moments felt so contrived or blatantly manufactured. At the same time, Jennifer Lopez held her charm throughout the film, since her story and her journey kept my attention. The second half of the film mainly works on heart, warmth, and some good insight for the whole family during the holidays.

It’s not a bad film. Definitely not. There are sporadic moments that show potential. It’s better than The Internship and miles better than This Means War. But unfortunately, Second Act might still sit in the bucket labeled “Skip it.”

Did you see Second Act? What did you think of the film? Share below!

Second Act was released in the US on December 21, 2018. For all international release dates, see here.