New J-Lo Movie Bordertown Booed At Berlin

Jennifer Lopez is a woman with many messages - her love don't cost a thing, don't be fooled by the rocks that she got - but the only message in most of Jennifer Lopez's films is "don't watch this - it's rubbish and Jennifer Lopez isn't very good in it."

However, that changes with Bordertown. In Bordertown, Jennifer Lopez plays a hard-bitten journalist determined to put an end to a long series of murders in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez. It's a noble message for Jennifer Lopez to put her name to - she's received an award from Amnesty International for making it - so it's just a shame that Bordertown got such a critical mauling during its press screening at the Berlin Film Festival that Jennifer Lopez looked as if she was going to burst into tears all the way through it.

Jennifer Lopez never seems to get the love she chases - her old husbands lost interest when she started suing them for writing a book about her, her old boyfriend Ben Affleck is publicly relieved that he didn't marry her and the only fun J-Lo gets nowadays comes from enraging Heather Mills by wearing animals quite often. Musically Jennifer Lopez is a third-rate Janet Jackson and the combo-blows of Gigli, The Wedding Planner, Jersey Girl, Enough and Monster-In-Law have ensured that nobody will ever take her film career too seriously either.

With this in mind, there was only going to be one place for Jennifer Lopez to turn: Scientology socially-aware movies. Face it, everyone's making socially aware movies now - Angelina Jolie made a film about the wife of a murdered war journalist, Leonardo DiCaprio is making a film about the evils of corporate greed and Brad Pitt made a film to raise awareness of men who cry into telephones a lot. So it's only right that Jennifer Lopez should also make a movie based on a serious issue grounded in fact.

So Jennifer Lopez made Bordertown; a movie about the very real - and very unsettling - unsolved murders of more than 400 women near American factories in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez. In it, Lopez plays Lauren Fredericks - an investigative journalist who quickly becomes too involved in her story. For making Bordertown, Jennifer Lopez was given an Artists For Amnesty award by Amnesty International at its press screening at the Berlin Film Festival and spoke movingly about the real situation in Ciudad Juarez, describing it as:

"One of the world's most shocking and disturbing, underreported crimes against humanity. When they came to me with the project, I immediately became very passionate about it and said that I would do it and I would help them get it made… What I thought [when I read the script] was, I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe this was going on. And then the more I found out about it the more real it became to me, I really felt like it came to me for a reason."

So well done to Jennifer Lopez for making a movie that might change the world. Or at least would change the world if Bordertown wasn't so badly booed during its first screening that it'll probably put people off going to watch it. Kirk Honeycutt from The Hollywood Reported said of Bordertown:

"It wants to be a thriller, a piece of investigative journalism, a political soapbox and a vehicle for Jennifer Lopez. It serves none of these masters well… "Bordertown" trivializes a very real issue in a hokey, unconvincing and ludicrous suspensor with Lopez as the rescuer."

But maybe Jennifer Lopez and Bordertown will fight back from this initial critical drubbing. After all, The Fountain got booed at Venice and went on to… oh wait. 

Read more:

J Lo Gets Mixed Reactions In Berlin - Playfuls

Jennifer Lopez Lost In Ludicrous Bordertown - Reuters