I’ll give her this: Jennifer Lopez still has that whole “sound and fury” thing down.
And once again, it’s signifying absolutely nothing. The multi-hyphenate’s latest cross-promotional effort is the music video for “Goin’ In,” a track featured on both her newly-released greatest-hits collection (boy, I’ll bet that thing’s padded) and on the soundtrack for the upcoming dance sequel “Step Up: Revolution 3D,” which is slated to hit theaters this Friday.
With its insipid lyrics and generic club beat, the song itself is yet another lukewarm offering from the former pop princess, which at this point should surprise absolutely no one. What should also surprise no one is that the visuals in the video have correspondingly been amped up to 11, as if to distract from the track’s failure to connect even as a guilty-pleasure pop confection.
Along with the always-reliable booty-shaking and PG-13 body-rubbing antics of its featured star, the clip (when it’s not inserting footage from the “Step Up” movie as a sort of compulsory marketing gesture) also gives us literal explosions of neon color throughout – paint-spraying fire hydrants, paint-exploding grenades, laser light shows, a dandelion dissolving into a rainbow-colored profusion of stars.
I shouldn’t even have to mention J. Lo’s innumerable costume changes, which range from a pink hooded robe (accessorized with eye-catching bedazzled lips!) to sparkly silver Hammer hammer pants and yellow hoodie (we get it, you’re still Jenny from the Block – there’s no need to keep reminding us). Did I mention both Flo Rida and Lil Jon make obligatory appearances as “featured” performers? Did I need to?
Even at the height of her fame, Lopez’s public persona always felt oddly flavorless. As a Latina superstar in a lily-white industry she certainly broke ground, but there was always the nagging sense that she was more interested in being a brand than a performer. The promise she showed early in her career, particularly as an actress in films like “Selena” and “Out of Sight,” now feels like a thing of the past, and I can’t help but feel like this video is an expression of the depths to which her career has fallen. While she’s still one of the most famous women in the world, as time goes on it’s almost as if her celebrity continues to require more and more splashes of color to divert our attention from the echo at the center of it.
My grade for the video: D+. After watching it below, rate it for yourself at top left!
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