Before being a judge on American Idol, before she was Jenny from the block, and before her romantic relationships became the subject of weekly tabloids, Jennifer Lopez took roles in some truly ridiculous films. Heck, she even took roles in convoluted movies well after gaining fame, so it wouldn’t be fair to ignore strange acting choices late in her career.
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Lopez got her start as a Fly Girl dancer on In Living Color, and like most actresses trying to transition to the big screen, you must sometimes settle for small parts in bad movies before taking leading lady status. The actress quickly paid her dues and, thanks to a burgeoning pop music career, Lopez got to star in slick crime thrillers like Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight and the visually lavish horror film The Cell, solidifying her talents. However, it took a slew of romantic comedies, revenge thrillers, and creature features before earning her status as a household name.
Check out our picks for the silliest and most ridiculous Jennifer Lopez movies, and make sure to let us know what we missed in the comments!
Money Train (1995)
One of her earliest attempts to transition into a film star, Lopez starred alongside Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes as a New York City transit officer. Harrelson and Snipes are clearly the leads in this film, which features the duo as foster brothers who are down on their luck and aim to rob a train that carries NYC’s transit fares across the city. Despite Lopez not taking center stage, the ridiculousness of this movie can’t be denied, what with its serial killer plots and underground robbery attempts on a moving train and all.
[H/T YouTube/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment]
Maid in Manhattan (2002)
Picking only one of Lopez’s romantic comedies with absurd and somewhat incoherent plots was difficult, but Maid in Manhattan takes the cake for the mere notion that in 2002, it seemed like a good idea to pair J. Lo up with Voldemort himself, Ralph Fiennes. Lopez stars as a maid (that’s where the punny title comes from!) who tries on a debutante’s coat, only to have Fiennes see her and assume she’s rich. Rather than just owning up to the confusion, this maid just goes along with the ruse, to “hilarious” results.ย Perhaps filmmakers learned their lesson from partnering Lopez up with a comparably famous star, as most of her co-stars in future romantic comedies were just indistinguishable handsome white men.
[H/T YouTube/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment]
The Boy Next Door (2015)
If you ever wondered what it would look like to have the director of The Fast and the Furious make an erotic thriller, well, The Boy Next Door is it. Jennifer Lopez plays a school teacher who gets seduced by her 19-year-old neighbor, who then goes on to request he be in her class when the school year starts. Just think about that detail for a moment, that this is a high school student who is 19 when the yearย begins.ย The student holds their tryst over her head in messages scrawled on locker room walls, printouts of themselves mid-coitus, sex tapes, and attempted murder of her character’s family. If “Jennifer Lopez erotic thriller” isn’t enough to whet your appetite, this movie also features a character getting stabbed in the eye with an EpiPen, only to have a car engine dropped on their head, much like something that would happen to Wile E. Coyote.
[H/T YouTube/Movieclips]
Gigli (2003)
In the early 2000s, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were two of the hottest stars in Hollywood, which built anticipation for this romantic comedy, in which the two starred alongside Al Pacino and Christopher Walken. Adding to the anticipation would be the duo’s love affair, and in a clever bit of wordplay, audiences couldn’t wait to see if “Bennifer” could bring their real-life chemistry to the screen. Undeniably, the answer was “nope.” Affleck plays the titular character tasked with kidnapping a prosecutor’s mentally-challenged younger brother, only to have Lopez’s character step in to make sure the job gets accomplished. Gigli not only was a financial disaster, costing over $70 million and grossing less than $7 million, but has long since served as a punchline as it’s considered one of the absolute worst movies of all time, ranking at a measilyย 6% on Rotten Tomatoes.
[H/T YouTube/shadowfax6264]
Anaconda (1997)
Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube wage war with a giant snake just so a (possibly French) Jon Voight can capture the beast. If that doesn’t get you to watch this movie, I don’t know what will. Some might consider the previous films to be awful and will avoid them at all costs, but do yourself a favor: watch Anaconda. It is completely bananas and incredibly entertaining. If Lopez, Cube, and Voight aren’t enough to pique your interests, Owen Wilson, Eric Stolz, and Kari Wuhrer round out the perfectly ’90s cast. Also, it should be noted that the reason J. Lo was in the Amazon in the first place was to film a hidden tribe of natives, in case you thought the plot made too much sense.
[H/T YouTube/Movieclips]
