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by Willie Waffle



Gigli

Everywhere I go, people ask me if Gigli is as bad as they hear it is.

Yes.

Yes it is.

This is the movie that proves that, in French, Gigli means, "Oh my God, the apocalypse is upon us." I've heard about fire, brimstone and eternal damnation, but none of that seems scary compared to seeing this movie again.

Ben Affleck stars as Larry Gigli - a loser, second-rate mob enforcer. He has been instructed to kidnap Brian (Justin Bartha) - the young, mentally challenged brother of a Federal prosecutor trying to put Gigli's godfather in jail. The mob thinks that they can intimidate the prosecutor into dropping the charges if he feels his beloved brother is in danger, and because Gigli is incompetent, a tougher mob enforcer, Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), is brought in to make sure the caper goes according to plan.

Will Gigli and Ricki be able to pull it off? Will Gigli's lust for Ricki screw everything up?

Gigli will forever be remembered as the movie where J. Lo and Affleck fell in love, but I have trouble believing that true love and marriage could spring from a movie this unholy, heinous and horrible. I have seen worse movies, but this one is SO bad when you consider the level of talent involved vs. how bad the script is and how badly conceived the story is. One has to think that Lopez and Affleck must owe someone a lot of money and were forced into making this one. I'd hate to think that they liked the script and thought it had potential. And I can't even bring myself to admit that Al Pacino (he was in THE GODFATHER and THE GODFATHER II!) really was in this piece of junk. Maybe it's all a bad dream.

Gigli has a horrible script starting from the idiocy of using a mentally challenged person for comic relief to it's moronic debate about male vs. female sex organs to the stupid love story that is supposed to emerge from this train wreck. Writer/director Martin Brest seems to be going for the hip, cool vibe of David Mamet or Steven Soderbergh, but ends up with a script that those two wouldn't use to line a birdcage. The dialogue is painfully inappropriate, stupid, unfunny, pointless, and unbelievable. I often look back on a movie like this and try to explain to you how it could have been done better, but I think Gigli never should have been made.

Brest can't figure out if this is a mob comedy, a love story or some edgy indie film, and never seems to set the right tone for any of it. The music feels as if it was lifted from an entirely different movie as it soars to emotional climax, while the action on the screen doesn't warrant it or call for it.

In a way, I feel sorry for Lopez, Affleck and Pacino (plus Christopher Walken who also shows up for a quick scene). They seem to be trying so hard to get something, anything out of a script that is devoid of anything interesting and good. I particularly felt bad for Affleck, who is horribly miscast as a two bit dumb hood. He looks too pretty to play the part, and no one decided that they should do something to his hair, face, overly manicured eyebrows or feminine lips to make him look tough and fit the role. Pacino is forced to recite a soliloquy that varies wildly from supposed-to-be-funny to supposed-to-be-scary, and Lopez is given the kind of dialogue that most female actors would have walked away from just to maintain their pride. She should have taken her script and thrown it into the fireplace. But, don't feel too bad. I'm sure the checks cleared.

Gigli is the kind of movie that makes me long for the days of vaudeville when you could just throw some rotten tomatoes at the people on the stage. Grade: F

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