Jennifer Lopez’s mother and husband famously like to roll the dice, once even starring in a sports-betting commercial together.
But J. Lo herself has always been the disciplined, strategic workaholic not known for betting the farm on a crazy idea.
Until now.
The singer/actress’ sweeping, three-part paean to her lifelong search for love — and her twisty reunion and marriage to Ben Affleck 21 years after they sensationally split up three days before their first planned wedding — is dropping this month.
And some of her closest friends and business partners feared for her, at least at first.
A whimsical, hourlong musical film called “This is Me Now … A Love Story“ came out Friday on Prime, along with her first studio album in 10 years, “This is Me … Now,” a sequel to 2002’s “This is Me…Then.”
There’s even a “Dear Ben Pt. II,” on the new album, a sequel to the earlier album’s “Dear Ben.”
Meanwhile, Feb. 27 brings a raw and candid documentary, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” revealing the struggle Lopez, 54, went through to make the musical film — and how she was forced to finance it with $20 million with her money after no one would pick it up and even Khloé Kardashian declined to appear in it.
“I didn’t think much of myself and so the world didn’t think much of me,” Lopez says, through tears, in the documentary.
She’s speaking about how she truly felt — both as a little girl in The Bronx and well into her adult years, despite her public persona as a polished, accomplished diva who always has a man on her arm.
Lopez says she felt like a forgotten middle child, ignored by a father who was always working and a “narcissistic, life of the party” mother.
It was Affleck “who made me believe in myself. Maybe I’m setting myself up to be f–king criticized again I don’t know,” she said of their reunited romance. “But this is what my heart’s telling me to do. I’m facing the truth. I’m not the same as I was 20 years ago.”
The entire project could have been another “Gigli” — the infamous 2002 big-screen bomb in which she co-starred with Affleck and which, some thought at the time, presaged their blockbuster breakup.
Instead, her “This is Me Now…A Love Story” film is racking up some rave reviews.
The Daily Beast called it “a masterful 65-minute rebuttal to all the doubters” and the Telegraph said “Jennifer Lopez’s cinematic odyssey is an astonishing pop-art tour de force.”
Friends ranging from Jane Fonda — who appears in the musical film as a goddess on a zodiac love council — to Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Lopez’s producing partner and former agent in the 1990s, had openly voiced their concern that she was going public with something too personal and could get hurt.
“I want you to know that I don’t entirely know why, but I feel invested in you and Ben, and I really want this to work,” Fonda, who has been Lopez’s good friend since they co-starred in 2005’s “Monster-in-Law,” tells her in the documentary. “However, this is my concern. Like, it feels too much like you’re trying to prove something instead of just living it. You know, every other photograph is the two of you kissing and the two of you hugging.”
Goldsmith-Thomas was another naysayer.”It came from a need to protect her,” the producer told The Post. “People were pretty cruel 22 years ago when ‘Maid in Manhattan’ came out and she was with Ben. They were critical and racist and unkind. I didn’t want to see that happen again. I was afraid people wouldn’t understand this and they’d take shots. I’m very protective of her privacy and her relationship.”
Director Dave Meyers told The Post he was in the room when he heard Fonda warn Lopez that she wasn’t sure the film was a good idea.
“It was a month before we were to start shooting and I thought it was going to be over right then and there because of how Jennifer looks up to Jane,” he said. “But she took a deep breath and pushed back, and that ferocity of spirit is why she is such a superstar.”
Lopez understood that her team felt the idea for the musical film was bonkers.
“Everybody thought I was crazy,” she told Variety. “And by the way, I thought I was crazy.”
But Goldsmith-Thomas admitted Friday, with good reviews for the film coming in, that she’s a lot less worried.
“She didn’t let my fear stop her,” Goldsmith-Thomas told The Post. “As usual, she wouldn’t let anyone straitjacket her. Nobody puts Baby in the corner. And in the end, this is not a story about what happened from the first time with Ben to being with Ben now.
“It’s about a woman who pretended everything was OK but who kept walking into walls and blaming the walls. It’s not even about what guy was a jerk or not. It’s about self-love. She couldn’t find her way out of her patterns until she forgave herself.”
Lopez makes fun of herself, her four marriages and her propensity for being a romance addict in the film.
Affleck plays a bewigged anchorman in the musical and appears occasionally in the documentary, as the two share a number of warm, funny — and honest — moments.
He appears startled, though, to learn that Lopez has shared his very private love letters with her co-songwriters for inspiration.
And it’s never really explained in the film or documentary why — if, as they’ve said, their 2003 break-up was partly because of the enormous publicity surrounding them — Lopez is opening up their relationship to such scrutiny again.
The musical film opens with Lopez looking hot, windswept and ecstatic on the back of a motorcycle and holding onto a partially-obscured guy who looks a lot like Affleck.
They crash spectacularly — and we next see her in a steampunk “Heart Factory” where she and a group of women keep a huge mechanical ticker beating by feeding it flower petals.
We then see her character —known only as The Artist — careen through three different weddings with men who may or may not resemble her former husbands: former busboy and waiter Ojani Noa, dancer and choreographer Cris Judd and Latin superstar Marc Anthony.
She also goes home with a younger man who’s a dead ringer for her backup dancer/boytoy Casper Smart, whom she began dating in 2011 after her divorce from Anthony.
Noa, who had been married to Lopez for less than a year when they divorced in 1997, told The Post he doesn’t follow ex-wife’s career and doesn’t plan to check out her new films or album.
“I don’t keep up with her at all because it doesn’t do me any good,” Noa, 49, said from his Florida home last week. “You want anything from me about her, you gotta pay me, understand?”
Other Lopez associates dish more praise than dirt.
“In terms of her work ethic, she’s the hardest working woman I’ve ever met, truly,” said a close source who has been with Lopez on the set of her new sci-fi thriller, “Atlas.”
Lopez told fans during a Stationhead listening party that when she was filming “Atlas,” in the middle of being covered in blood and guts, she’d run into a makeshift studio on set to sing and re-record things [from the new album] that she felt needed improvement.
Damon Gonzalez, an LA-based actor who worked as a personal assistant to Lopez and Anthony during the early years of their marriage, was at the premiere of “This is me … Now” in LA last week.
“Seeing her brought back such great memories,” Gonzalez told The Post. “She has the most incredible work ethic. People sometimes ask me, ‘Oh, is she evil?’ It’s just the opposite. She always made us feel like family. I never saw her cop an attitude or be nasty, and I’ve worked for a lot of very tough people. She really set a tone. I always felt comfortable. There was a real trust there.”
And there are important people in Lopez’s life who hope that this go-round with Affleck sticks.
“This better be it, man,” Jane Fonda tells her near the end of the documentary. “I’m rooting for you.”
Additional reporting by Sara Nathan
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