76 Thoughts I Had While Rewatching Jennifer Lopez in ‘Monster-in-Law’

There’s nothing I love more than a J.Lo rom-com (truly, I believe it’s her highest art form, no offense to her seven other careers), and today feels like a great day to revisit the 2005 masterpiece of the genre Monster-in-Law, which also stars the great Jane Fonda, Wanda Sykes, and some generic chiseled white guy whose name I won’t be googling, sorry. Let’s dive in and revisit this classic, shall we?

1. Establishing shots of LA in movies always make me so proud to live here.
2. I mean, it’s undeniably stupid to live here (versus in almost any other American city, financially speaking), but look at the beach! And the Grove!
3. Will Arnett is in this movie?
4. And Elaine Stritch?
5. J.Lo and her extremely long, flat-ironed, aughts hair are sketching dresses in her suspiciously huge, sun-lit apartment (ah, movie magic) when Platonic Neighbor Adam Scott shows up to hang out.
6. She can’t, though, because she’s off to walk dogs.
7. Ugh, I want my job to be walking 15 dogs on a beach while reading them their horoscopes.
8. Astrology, dogs, beach walks; J.Lo, welcome to the LA lesbian community!
9. Meet-cute time! Generic Love Interest Guy is jogging shirtless on the beach, as men who look like that tend to do, when he sees J.Lo and falls in love.
10. Likely thing to happen! Seriously, I feel like this would happen to me, too.
11. J.Lo is reading her tarot cards (again, this woman is in community!) with Adam Scott and her girl bestie, telling them about her beach crush.
12. Why do rom-com characters always feel so comfortable roasting their friends about not having sex?
13. Seriously, that’s not, like, my go-to when trying to playfully tease my homies.
14. Okay, roasting her for wanting a guy who “makes a difference” does check out.
15. J.Lo has more jobs in this movie than she does in real life! And, as noted earlier, she’s pretty busy in real life. (Remember her perfume brand?)
16. Now she’s at a catering gig helping her girl bestie out, and Generic Love Interest Guy is there!
17. Apparently he’s a doctor who just moved back from SF, and he’s throwing the party.
18. Wait, is Adam Scott attempting to play gay in this?
19. God, I hope we never bring back short-sleeved T-shirts over long-sleeved henleys.
20. Oop, there’s Will Arnett, talking about how brave and amazing his buddy Dr. Love Interest is.
21. A blond girl in a headband is being a bitch to J.Lo, which I think she’ll find is a mistake.
22. Flirt time!
23. Mean Headband Blond lies to J.Lo that Dr. Love Interest is gay (in a super-homophobic way, I might add).
24. Dr. Love Interest is chasing J.Lo to no avail, so he brings her coffee on the beach while she’s walking dogs, and they establish with a kiss that he is Not Gay.
25. J.Lo tests Dr. Love Interest’s, well, interest, by turning around and asking him to recite her eye color, and of course, he does it all romantically and such.
26. Aw, J.Lo is an orphan!
27. Hey, it’s Jane Fonda and Wanda Sykes, two women I am always happy to see on my TV screen.
28. Jane is confident she’s about to get a raise at her news-anchor job, but instead she gets fired and starts smashing stuff. Respect.
29. Okay, I know this pop girlie is supposed to represent the Death of Broadcast Journalism and All Things Good and Decent, but her song is kind of…a bop?
30. “Just take a look inside my makeup bag” is a good lyric, let’s be real.
31. Jane loses it on air and tries to throttle the pop girlie, which…no respect at all. Laisse tomber les filles, as France Gall once said!
32. Jane’s in anger management, all therapized out and ready to take a long-delayed trip to Africa with her son (who, in case you haven’t put it together yet, is Dr. Love Interest), but unfortunately, he has a new live-in GF in the mix named J.Lo, and Jane is not happy about it.
33. Time to meet the parent!
34. Jane’s all in white with bright red lipstick, looking incredibly intimidating, and she and J.Lo seem to be getting along.
35. Oop, spoke too soon: Dr. Love Interest proposes, J.Lo says yes, and Jane freaks the fuck out in a very WASP-y, genteel way (in public, at least).
36. Wanda Sykes’s delivery of “You look like a damn cockatoo” just made me spit out coffee laughing.
37. Jane is specifically upset that her son, the brilliant surgeon, is marrying “a temp,” which…hmm.
38. Oh, okay, it’s also that she has no money and Jane assumes she’s a gold-digger.
39. I love Jane’s seaweed-green sleep mask.
40. Jane in a turban…hmm, again.
41. Especially since she’s embarrassing J.Lo by introducing her as “a temp” to various foreign dignitaries.
42. OMG, Mean Headband Blond tries to seduce Dr. Love Interest!
43. Phew, it doesn’t work.
44. Oh, no, Mean Headband Blond kisses Dr. Love Interest and J.Lo sees them in action before he can pull away.
45. Also, she messed up her fancy borrowed dress in some way I missed?
46. Jane invites J.Lo to lunch, and it is on (the feud between them, I mean. Where’s Ryan Murphy when you need him?).
47. “I’m making the dress to fit my body, not the other way around” is really good wedding-dress advice that I’m filing away in my brain.
48. Addicted to J.Lo’s crocheted poncho (words I never thought I’d say).
49. It kind of reminds me of an aughts version of the designer Sweater Hex’s work.
50. Also, the little butterfly hair clips! I die!
51. J.Lo snaps, Jane rats her out, and J.Lo and Dr. Love Interest fight, much as Jane had hoped.
52. Jane hires an actor to pose as her doctor and insist she’s on the verge of a psychotic break and needs to move in with J.Lo and Dr. Love Interest. Oy, vey!
53. Jane keeps J.Lo up all night with fake nightmares and general weirdness, and you can tell she’s starting to break (as I would, immediately, if you disrupted my precious sleep!).
54. Prenup fight time!
55. “Racist ceremonial robe as mother-in-law wedding outfit” fight time!
56. Wow, okay, busting in on candlelit bath time is another unforgivable offense in the Emma Canon.
57. J.Lo finds Jane’s dossier of research on her, not to mention her $400 “skin caviar,” and isn’t pleased about it.
58. J.Lo gets one of the dogs she watches to terrify Jane and then flings tomato sauce on her pristine white outfit; legend shit.
59. Even more dogs are tearing up the guest room!
60. J.Lo feeds Jane a sleeping pill that knocks her out overnight, and Wanda Sykes finds out but is…kind of supportive of it, LOL?
61. Yes, J.Lo! Snitch to Dr. Love Interest about Jane drinking with the fake “pills” she’s taking!
62. “This is my game now.” Hell yeah, J.Lo!
63. OMG, she invites Jane’s real doctor to dinner. The most savage thing you can to do a WASP boomer, honestly.
64. Yay, Elaine Stritch!
65. “I got out of the car the same way I got in it: without you.” Another legend!
66. Oof, Will Arnett hitting on a wedding attendee who turns out to be a teenage girl didn’t really age so well.
67. Aw, J.Lo looks so beautiful in her wedding dress!
68. OMG, Jane wore white too. Drama!
69. Slap time!
70. Oh wow, Elaine Stritch turns out to be semi-nice to J.Lo, while admittedly quite racist.
71. Elaine accuses Jane of killing her son (a.k.a. one of Jane’s four ex-husbands), Jane accuses Elaine of smothering him his whole life, and the generational drama continues.
72. Boundaries time!
73. Aw, J.Lo tells Jane she desperately wants her to be a part of her and Dr. Love Interest’s eventual kids’ lives. It’s sweet.
74. Hatchet buried!
75. Wedding!
76. Bye!