Review Roundup: KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN Film Starring Jennifer Lopez Premieres at Sundance

The new film version of the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman officially made its premiere this past weekend at the Sundance Film Festival. Starring Jennifer Lopez, this new adaptation is written and directed by Bill Condon. The cast also includes Diego Luna, Tonatiuh, Jennifer Lopez, Bruno Bichir, Josefina Scaglione, and Aline Mayagoitia.

Winner of seven 1993 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on the novel by Manuel Puig, explores the complex relationship between two men caged together in a Latin American prison for very different reasons. The musical has a book by Terrence McNally, with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb.

Valentín, a political prisoner, shares a cell with Molina, a window dresser convicted of public indecency. The two form an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot of a Hollywood musical starring his favorite silver-screen diva, Ingrid Luna.

Find out what the critics are saying in the reviews below!

Pete Hammond, Deadline: It’s nice to report that the stunning new film adaptation of their 1993 Tony-winning musical Kiss of the Spider Woman joins Cabaret and Chicago as a master class in how to find the cinematic soul of a Broadway musical while still doing it justice on screen 30 years later — and in a very different time culturally.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: Those scenes give Jennifer Lopez one of the best roles of her career as Luna, putting her singing and dancing bona fides to excellent use. She looks sensational in Colleen Atwood’s stunning costumes, and the verve she brings to her songs lifts the entire movie. It’s a part that calls for a larger-than-life presence, and Lopez supplies it.

Peter DeBruge, Variety: Each time “Kiss” cuts away from the cold gray walls of the cell, it calls for a star who can vamp her way through 1960s-style song-and-dance numbers, the way Chita Rivera did onstage. Here we get no less a diva than Lopez smoldering in a three-pronged role (Ingrid Luna, Aurora and the Spider Woman), which should draw crowds who might not otherwise have a taste for musicals. And yet, it’s relative newcomer Tonatiuh who walks away with the show, finding both strength and vulnerability in a character who seems less frivolous with each passing scene.

Fionnuala Halligan, Screen Daily: The cast is sincere and committed, from newcomer Tonatiuh in the Hurt role, to Diego Luna (for Raoul Julia) and Jennifer Lopez (in a version of the part once played by Sonia Braga, and, on stage, by Chita Rivera). It’s disappointing that what they are peddling has become so distorted. Spangly song-and-dance numbers punctuate — irregularly – grisly prison scenes and a tortured gay love story which now must accommodate more modern gender thinking. The effort is strenuous; all 128 minutes of it. But it’s almost as exhausting to watch as it must have been to make.

Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire: But what’s a star-making performance when the package surrounding the actor is otherwise so ordinary and un-cosmic? Lopez, while impressive as a vamping, dreamed-up screen star in the silhouette of Rita Hayworth or any other pin-up you’d too have plastered on the walls of your prison cell if you were a gay Hollywood-movie obsessive, doesn’t get the chance to do anything risky or vulnerable. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is a flashy ode to the fairies and the radicals, the maricóns who’ve repurposed their oppression and media literacy into an outsize, fuck-if-I-care-what-you-think political identity. Yet there’s nothing revolutionary about the movie that contains them.