‘Halftime’ Review: A Documentary About Jennifer Lopez That’s Too Celebratory to Have Much Drama

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticFor reviewers, it’s become a cliché when writing about a soft-pedaled, fan-service pop-star documentary to refer to it as an infomercial.

The cliché isn’t always wrong. On occasion, I’ve used the I-word. But one reason that I stopped using is it seemed too easy — and also, I couldn’t help but notice that I was enjoying (and a getting a lot out of) certain music docs that were unabashed celebrations of their subject, even if they didn’t take the deepest dives or linger on the dark side.

As a Billie Eilish fan, I went into “Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry” already knowing a lot about her; two hours and 20 minutes later, I emerged knowing a lot more, feeling closer to her process and her mystique.

Ditto for “Gaga: Five Foot Two.” So when I say that “Halftime,” the Jennifer Lopez documentary that opened the Tribeca Film Festival tonight (like those other two docs, it’s being released on Netflix), truly does feel like an infomercial, I’m not using the term in a knee-jerk way.