Film review: Death on the Nile

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Marry Me is not exactly a “future Sunday-afternoon romcom classic”, said Adam White in The Independent, but it’s perfectly watchable stuff. Jennifer Lopez stars as Kat, a pop star who decides to marry her equally famous boyfriend Bastian (played by the Colombian singer Maluma) during a Madison Square Garden concert. “Mere seconds before she hits the stage”, however, Kat learns that “he’s been cheating on her with her assistant”. Devastated, “but wearing an expensive wedding dress”, she does “what any self-respecting publicity hound would do: she plucks a random audience member from the crowd and marries him instead”.

Luckily for her, maths teacher Charlie (Owen Wilson) is a gentle divorcee with a cute child, and the pair fall in love “faster than you can say Notting Hill”. Even for a romcom, the plot stretches credibility – but the film “just about gets away with it”, thanks to the “winsome chemistry” of the leading duo.

“On paper this shouldn’t really work,” said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. “The premise is slight and predictable and Lopez, at 52, and Wilson, at 53, are surely a little too old to properly convince.” On screen, however, it’s a “treat”, helped along by “some lovely set pieces, a well-polished screenplay and the fact that Lopez – obviously playing a version of herself – has always been good at this sort of thing.”

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I’m afraid it didn’t charm me, said Edward Porter in The Sunday Times. The film tries to glide over its unconvincing premise and shoddy structure “by virtue of sheer, shmaltzy niceness”. A “much better idea would have been to include funny jokes”.