Review: Gigli (2003)

In the theater where I saw Gigli, there was a couple sitting in the front row. For much of the two hours and six minutes it takes for this movie to lumber, stumble and brey its way from its first reel to its last, they barely paid attention to the images flickering on the screen above them, choosing instead to spend much of the time macking on each other and even straddling one another during some of the more darkly lit scenes. I mention this only because the show they put on for the widely scattered audience (a dozen in all for the Sunday matinee) was decidely more interesting than anything on the screen.

Ben Affleck plays the title character, Larry Gigli ("It's pronounced 'GEE-lee,' sounds like "really"), a low-level thug working for a slightly higher-level thug, Louis (Lenny Venito), who considers Larry a total fuck-up. Does that stop Louis from giving Larry the important assignment of kidnapping the mentally challenged, institutionalized younger brother of a federal prosecutor who's hassling their boss (Al Pacino)? Nope. Wouldn't have had much a movie otherwise. (Not that we have much of a movie anyway.) Larry manages to spirit away Brian (Justin Bartha, in his first and, we can hope, only big-screen appearance) away from the mental hospital and back to his apartment. Along the way, Larry finds that Brian appears to have Tourette's Syndrome (blurting expletives at random) or maybe Down Syndrome (innocent, yet wise) or some magical blend thereof that you never find outside the movies.

So doubtful of Larry's ability to carry out the assignment that he contracts Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), supposedly a killer-for-hire, even though we never see her--or Larry, for that matter--kill or even hurt anyone. Ricki is also supposedly "Gay...a lesbian," which doesn't stop Larry from crushing on her, arguing with her about the superiority of the male appendage, decaring that each relationship has "a cow" and "a bull" (he's right about the "bull," just not the way he meant it)...just generally making an ass out of himself. Not that it's hard to do that: Larry doesn't own any books and has to read the label of a bottle of Tobasco as a bedtime story for Brian. (Wonder if Tobasco had to pay for that product placement--if so, they got ripped off.)

And that's pretty much the movie, aside from some brief detours provided by stars who ought to have known better. Christopher Walken pops in as a cop who hassles Larry and Ricki in a scene so poorly constructed and framed that it looks like Walken and Lopez aren't even in the same room. (Note to Walken or whomever approves scripts for him: after appearing in The Country Bears, Kangaroo Jack and now Gigli, all of which qualify as the celluloid equivalent of used toilet paper, you might want to think about being a bit more selective.) Lanie Kazan shows up long enough to get an injection in her ass and to lavish praise on Lopez's overwhelming beauty. And Pacino's single scene is almost forgivable, since he glides into town to tell all the major characters that they're fucking idiots. (Yea, Al!)

There's plenty of blame to go around here. Neither Affleck nor Lopez should have come within a thousand miles of this film--both have been in recent hit movies and, regardless of what you thought of Daredevil or The Wedding Planner, both qualify as major movie stars. That's probably how this movie got made--through their combined star power. They met for the first time on the set of Gigli and began their overpublicized romance there, yet little of that spark makes it onto the screen--the attempted romance is nearly as lifeless as the look in Affleck's eyes as talks out of the left side of his mouth in some sort of indeterminate tough-guy accent (like he's from New York, even though his character apparently grew up in California). And Lopez seems like she's perpetually on the verge of cracking up at the mind-numbing lines of dialogue she has to deliver (or has to hear coming out of Affleck's mouth).

And there is where much of the blame must rest--with Martin Brest, who not only directed and co-produced this mess, but wrote the screenplay, which will no doubt be the subject of many film school term papers for decades to come. Brest has done good work before, in Midnight Run and Scent of a Woman (for which Pacino won his second Oscar), but here he goes wrong in every way possible. Not one word of dialogue in Gigli sounds like it's being spoken by a real human being; instead, it sounds like low-rent Kevin Smith (whose Chasing Amy also featured Affleck trying to convert a lesbian over to the hetero side) filtered through Tarentino and Runyon. The monologues are the worst, though: Affleck's praise of the design and usage of the cock is only exceeded for sheer pretentiousness and ridiculousness by Lopez's subsequent assertion of the superiority of the pussy (this while pretzeling her lithe, backlit figure through various yoga positions--like that's supposed to distract us from how stupid all of this sounds). Brian, endlessly called "the retard" by other characters, rambles on about wanting to go to "the Baywatch" (like that's a specialty shop downtown instead of a TV show) and winds up at the beach in a dance number (yes, really), just before an ending for Larry and Ricki that feels stapled on.

Brest may have wanted to make a challenging film about sexual identity and politics. A noble goal. If that was his intention, though, he missed the mark by a wide margin, instead producing something stunning--just not in any sort of good way.

As the credits finally rolled and the couple in the front row ceased snogging long enough to make good their escape, a drain in the middle of the aisle began to flood the theater due to a torrential downpour in progress outside.

Sewage bubbling up in a theater showing Gigli--somehow, that seems appropriate.