Second Act

“Do you ever look at your life and wonder how you got there; if you made different choices, would you be happier?”

On a normal day, I ask this question end number of times to myself and maybe that’s why Second Act despite being another ‘chick flick’ as they would like to call it, became so personal to me. It’s been a while since I wrote a movie review, something I really enjoyed. In spite of watching all the new releases, somehow I couldn’t word it out how it made me feel. What was stopping me? Well, the only thing stopping me was me, a little quote from which the movie draws its premise and something I really need to get my head around, still.

Second Act is a breezy and heart-warming story about Maya (Jennifer Lopez) who gave over 15 years of her life to a store but is denied higher opportunities since she had to drop out from school and doesn’t own a degree. With a birthday wish for a world where street smart equal book smart, Maya’s life takes a turn she was never prepared for, thanks to her tech-savvy god-son played by Dalton Harrod. In a desperate need to prove herself right and good enough, with a lot of help from her friends and another lot of manipulations by her godson, Maya manages to pull off the ‘fake it till you make it’ set up in the initial few days. But before she knew, the plot of her own story flips making her life as well as the story a bit messier.

Jennifer Lopez is undeniably the biggest strength of this movie with her charm and drop-dead gorgeousness. She brings Maya to life with an earnest and spirited performance. Leah Remini as Maya’s sassy bestie is an absolute pleasure to watch and is someone every woman must have in real life to remind us ‘no matter who we want to be, we must never forget who we actually are.’ The rest of the cast like Vanessa Hudgens, Treat Williams, Milo Ventimiglia and Charlyne Yi gives us pleasing performances but lacks any further layers to their characters. 

Except for a few unconvincing plot twists, the film largely worked for me, as somewhere it’s a personally relatable movie. Somewhere along a life so messed up, we often undervalue ourselves and try to project a personality or life completely different from what’s real. Only to realize after hitting the rock bottom that, ‘You are always good enough and you are the only one who ever doubted it.’

Picture Courtesy: IMDb