Tribeca Opening-Night Review: Jennifer Lopez Documentary ‘Halftime’

deadline.com:

“It takes a while to warm up to me,” says Jennifer Lopez in a pep talk to the troupe of admirably stoic dancers she’s been putting through the wringer for several months.

The same is true of Amanda Micheli’s documentary Halftime, a scattershot and largely anodyne portrayal of the actress-singer that snatches enough intimate moments to just about pass muster as more than PR fluff.From the outset, it seems to be fighting a losing battle with relevance, since the time period it deals with—the run-up to JLo’s halftime show with Shakira at the 2020 Super Bowl in Miami—now seems such a very long time ago after Covid, Black Lives Matter and the last days of Donald Trump’s presidency (not to mention this year’s show with Dr.

Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Mary J. Blige). The climactic moments do pay off, however, proving that Lopez’s pontifications about mounting a Latina-celebrating girl-power spectacular aren’t just hot air.Micheli’s doc, which had its world premiere as the opening-night film of the Tribeca Festival, opens at such a pace it causes narrative whiplash, starting the countdown to the Super Bowl show in July 2019 and simultaneously tracking Lopez’s bumpy ride through awards season after the Toronto Film Festival premiere of Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers in September the same year.

An early attempt to weave in Lopez’s deprived but happy childhood seems perfunctory—a clip of the Sweet Charity song “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This” and she’s out of the family home in the grey boredom of the Bronx, aged just 18.