A debate has broken out on social media as to whether or not Lorene Scafaria’s new film, Hustlers, is feminist. So let me get that out of the way first: Of course Hustlers is feminist. It’s a film written and directed by a woman, starring a cast of women, based on a New York magazine article by a woman (Jessica Pressler), and it focuses on women reclaiming their power (albeit illegally) in an arena—strip clubs and champagne rooms—where they are often exploited or worse.

But frankly, it’s the wrong question to ask. Here are the real questions: Is the film entertaining? Wildly so. Is it the best star-vehicle Jennifer Lopez has had in years, possibly ever? Totally. Is it a celebration of female friendship, badassery, and resilience? You’re damn right it is.

Constance Wu plays Destiny, a new employee at a New York strip club that caters to a Wall Street clientele. At first she doesn’t quite know how to work the room, until she spies club veteran Ramona (Lopez) doing her thing and is mesmerized. Who wouldn’t be? This is the greatest female entrance on film since a besotted Bradley Cooper laid eyes on Lady Gaga singing “La Vie En Rose” in last year’s A Star is Born.

At 50, Lopez still looks like a golden goddess, and she draws expertly upon her dance background, spinning on the pole, doing aerial splits, and smacking her platform shoes emphatically against the stage. I was, to borrow a phrase, fully gagged. Her Ramona takes Destiny under her wing, because that’s who Ramona is (later, it will be a source of friction between the two women, as Ramona can’t help but to take in strays). Never before has Lopez’s combination of sexual magnetism and maternal warmth been used to better effect. (Ramona is, in fact, a single mother. She describes the lengths mothers will go to protect their children as a “mental illness.”) Under Ramona’s tutelage, Destiny—who is trying to make enough money to pay off her grandmother’s debts—gets good at her job. She learns how to recognize which Wall Street guys are real players and which are wannabes (hint: Look at their shoes). She learns how to give them what they want—but not all of what they want. And she learns how to encourage them to rack up charges on their platinum cards.

Destiny becomes friends with the other women at the club, including Keke Palmer, Cardi B (a natural!), and Lili Reinhart. (My beloved Lizzo has a brief cameo—and even plays the flute!). The great Mercedes Ruehl (where ya been, lady?) is on hand as a kind of den mother the girls call “mama.” Everything is going swimmingly until the stock market crashes and the good times stop rolling. All the women try to get “real” jobs—the glamorous Ramona improbably ends up at an Old Navy—but the pay is ridiculously low and, what’s more, they have no power in big box America. In the strip club, they were the ones in control.

At this point, their old club still exists, but it’s gotten seedier, uglier. But still, as we know, while lots of Wall Street dudes lost their jobs after the stock market crash, some of the biggest players managed to stay rich—and even get richer. These are the men that Ramona decides to target—luring them first into the club’s private rooms, then later hotel suites (so the clubs can’t get a cut), drugging them just enough so that they forget everything, and stealing money from their credit cards. She recruits Destiny and some of the old crew to help her.

Hustlers has the structure of many similar crime films: the wide-eyed apprentice seduced by the charismatic gang leader, the specific details of the con, the heady days of happiness and prosperity (in this case, fortified by a giddy dose of girl power), and the inevitable fall. It even has a Scorsese-esque narration, courtesy of an interview a journalist (Julia Stiles) does with Destiny. Director Scafaria is a master at all this, wielding a montage scene like a scalpel, injecting the film with the perfect combination of humor, heart, cynicism, wish fulfillment, and sex, all bolstered by Lopez’s career-defining performance. Hustlers is the mashup of Showgirls, Goodfellas, and The Big Short that we never knew we needed. Rejoice! Movies are good again.

At 49, Jennifer Lopez is still uncannily youthful in appearance—like, portrait in the attic youthful. So it’s very much to her credit that she’s playing a 40-year-old in her new workplace comedy Second Act. (Yeah, still almost a decade younger than she actually is. But still! 40!)

Despite that, Second Act seems curiously frozen in time. It’s not just a throwback to the kind of films Lopez was making in the early aughts, like The Wedding Planner and, especially, Maid in Manhattan, it seems stubbornly indifferent to the reality of the passage of time. Lopez’s Maya lives with her dishy, baseball coach boyfriend (Milo Ventimiglia), who wants to start a family. Maya is reluctant—but not because of fears of infertility or even because she has made a considered, adult life choice to not have children. She has other reasons—which the film will eventually disclose. The film takes it for granted that if and when Maya decides to get pregnant, she will!

That’s just one of the ways Second Act feels out of whack. The whole film feels off, always a step too fast or too slow, like a drummer on a pop track that can’t quite find the beat.

Here’s its Working Girl meets Maid in Manhattan (meets—oddly enough—the recent Amy Schumer vehicle, I Feel Pretty) premise: Maya is working at a Wal-Mart-type store where she’s an assistant manager and absolutely crushing it. She wants to get promoted to store manager, but the company has an elitist policy wherein it only promotes those with college degrees, so she quits. Her tech whiz godson creates a false resume and impressive online presence for her—Wharton Business School grad, Peace Corps, fluent in Mandarin, the works—and she gets hired as an executive consultant at a family-owned beauty company. She first clashes with—and then befriends—the 20something heir to the company (Vanessa Hudgens) who runs the cosmetics line. (An exact plot point from I Feel Pretty, by the way.) None other than Treat Williams—where ya been, man?— plays the kind-hearted company patriarch.

Second Act gets a few of the grace notes right: Charline Yi is particularly winning as Maya’s adorkable assistant, who has an inconvenient fear of heights (the offices are on the 59^th floor) and a few sly secrets up her sleeve. There’s a mildly funny bit about how Maya’s potty-mouthed bestie (Leah Remini) keeps trying not to curse in front of her impressionable son. (Honestly, “funny” is generous. But hey, at least they tried.)

But movies like this are all about temporary lows that lead to soaring triumphs—those big pay-off scenes where we can laugh and cry and shout, “You go, girl!” at the screen. And Second Act botches all of these to an almost laughable degree. Maya’s big confrontation with the villain—a smarmy young executive at the beauty company (Freddie Stroma)—is sidestepped before it even happens. Her confessional speech in front of an audience at a cosmetics convention (exactly like the one in I Feel Pretty…weird, right?) gets truncated and then passed off to her underlings. An important montage prominently features characters we haven’t met before. A life-changing disclosure just kind of…happens, with little suspense or buildup. The two most emotional reunions toward the end of the film are rushed, particularly one involving Hudgens’ Zoe.

In Second Act, Jennifer Lopez is mostly let down by her script. I still think she can be a bankable romcom star, but she needs to find a film that allows her—and her audience—to finally grow up.