'Marry Me' and Popcorn

I'm writing about the Jennifer Lopez/Owen Wilson vehicle, I am not proposing to any of you at this time.

Welcome to the Double Feature! Each week I write one thing about entertainment and one thing about food. They’re not related, unless for some reason you think they are, in which case it was definitely on purpose.

I watched: Marry Me

Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson in Marry Me

The 2022 Oscar nominations came out on Tuesday, and I have seen exactly two of the Best Picture nominees (Dune and Nightmare Alley, both of which I liked!). Rather than catching up on the 2022 movies that I haven’t seen, this week I got a head start and saw what critics are saying is a shoo-in to sweep the 2023 awards: Marry Me, the new romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson.

Jennifer Lopez plays international pop star Kat Valdez, who’s engaged to be married to another pop star (played by Maluma) in an elaborate globally broadcast hybrid concert/wedding ceremony. As she’s about to go on stage for her combination vows/chart-topping-duet-with-her-beloved, she sees the tabloid story that just broke: he’s been cheating on her with her assistant. She goes on stage in shock, and rather than cancel the wedding, she throws caution to the wind and marries who else but regular guy Charlie (Owen Wilson), who just happened to be in the crowd holding his friend’s “MARRY ME” sign, because that friend (Sarah Silverman) had two extra tickets and convinced him to bring his daughter so that he could show her that he’s just as fun as his ex-wife. For the rest of the movie, Kat and Charlie walk the line between performing the marriage to save Kat’s career and actually falling in love.

It’s contrived! It’s extremely silly! It’s a romantic comedy, baby! And like all good romantic comedies, it succeeds on the strength of its leads. Lopez and Wilson do their best make this ultra-high concept feel if not believable, then at least a fun time for two hours.

Throughout the movie, Jennifer Lopez performs several entire songs from her fictional character Kat Valdez’s discography. The songs enter your ears and then immediately turn to vapor, lyrics and melody never to be remembered again, but the performances themselves are strong and fun to watch. One of them, “Church,” feels like a cut scene from the all-time classic Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. As the first song of the big wedding concert, Lopez performs it clad in a spandex crucifix and backed by what one might describe as BDSM nuns. She plays it completely straight, which makes it all the more absurd. It’s unclear if it’s intended to be as funny as I found it, but five stars, no notes.

As the other half of the lead duo, Owen Wilson does a lot of heavy lifting. As the audience’s way in Kat Valdez’s chaotic life of superstardom, Wilson has to sell that someone would actually voluntarily sign up for this, and he does. Owen Wilson seems like he has two modes: playing extremely weird characters in way that makes them relatable, or playing normal characters that make the extremely weird world around them relatable. Either way, he has a leveling effect on every project he’s in, a calming presence that brings the audience into the movie, and here is no different.

Together, J-Lo and O-Wil have a chemistry spice level that sits somewhere between bell pepper and the low-end of shishito peppers, but they play the “This is absurd but I’m starting to like you”/“Hey, I’m a millionaire and you’re a math teacher but you’re pretty cute” part of the relationship very well. The movie doesn’t explore much further than that, but that’s the bread and butter of a good romantic comedy, and it’s a fun zone to live in for two hours.

Marry Me is silly and somewhat by the numbers, but it’s got just enough of that special romantic comedy juice to light up the part of your brain that believes in absurd romantic gestures and thinks that (controversially) being in love is good.

Marry Me is in theaters and available to stream at home on the cheapest paid Peacock plan ($5/month).

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I made: Popcorn

This is popcorn. I didn’t take this picture.

At some point in 2020, because I regularly enjoy making things way harder than they need to be and I, for some reason, had abundant free time, I changed up my home popcorn game.

I am very passionate about popcorn.

Previously, I was a pre-popped bagged popcorn guy. I stand by this as being better than microwaved popcorn, because most microwaved popcorn tastes like some food chemists came up with a flavor that tasted kinda close to butter, then organized for better pay and benefits, their employer fired them, lost the recipe, brought in non-union food chemists to re-create it, and then those non-union food chemists made some severely fucked up shit and called it a day.

That being said, the one thing that microwaved popcorn has over pre-popped popcorn is heat. Longing for fresh popcorn, I decided to do what all my favorite internet chefs have long told me to do: make it myself.

I found that it’s not that hard! When I first started, I followed internet chef Carla Lalli Music’s guide, which lives on the increasingly insufferable Bon Appetit website, and also points the reader to using a seasoning mixture that I like but don’t think is the end-all-be-all of popcorn that her particular blog post would lead you to believe. But it’s a great starting guide!

These days I do a hybrid of her guide and a different internet chef’s (I think it was Sohla El-Waylly, but I don’t remember!), and I feel like it works better for me.

Here are the basics!

You need:

• A large, heavy-bottomed pot or dutch oven, with a lid

• Popcorn kernels

• Olive oil

• Butter

• Salt

• Other seasonings (optional)

Here’s what you do:

1. In the pot, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 3 kernels of popcorn, uncovered over medium heat.

2. When the first kernel pops, pour in a half cup of kernels, quickly stirring them a bit so they’re coated in oil and spread evenly over the bottom of the pan. Put the lid on the pot.

3. Raise the heat to somewhere between medium and medium high.

4. Listen to the popping. At the first sign of it slowing down, shake the pan a bit so that the unpopped kernels get more attention and the popped kernels don’t burn.

5. Meanwhile, melt the butter. I usually do somewhere between two to three tablespoons, melted in a glass in the microwave.

   • (Here’s a chance to get kooky with it: sometimes I chop up some rosemary and throw it in with the butter while it melts, making a little herby butter. It’s good!)

6. Continue popping, shaking the pot occasionally, until the pops have fully slowed. When you can count two second between pops, it’s done. Remove from heat and vent the lid so the steam escapes.

7. Pour half the popcorn in your serving bowl. Pour half of the melted butter over the popcorn, toss to coat, then do the same thing with the rest of the popcorn and the rest of the butter. Season to taste with salt/whatever else you want to put on there.

8. Eat it! Enjoy it! Bask in it! You made this popcorn, now you will consume it and it will become part of you. You have created something beautiful and it has merged with you to create one form. You are forever changed. You stand in the current of a river of time that flows all the way back to Orville Redenbacher himself. You are his heir. The power, do you feel it? The gods envy you. Go forth and pop more corn.

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