Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.
Based solely on its critical reception, it would have been easy to confuse the release of Gigli in theaters with the release of a notorious child murderer from prison. The title became an instant punchline, made even funnier by the fact that no one could pronounce it. (As the title character informs us repeatedly throughout the movie, it “rhymes with really.”) Few movies could be as terrible as it was purported to be, and indeed, Gigli isn’t one of them. In fact, it seems as though America has re-evaluated the movie since its release. I expected to find it much higher on the Bottom 100 chart, but #71 sounds about right.
The wave of bad publicity that crushed the movie can largely be blamed on the off-screen shenanigans of its stars, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. You could argue that it was unfair of reviewers to take out their frustrations on the movie itself, and you would have a point, but let us not forget how truly obnoxious the whole Ben ‘n Jen circus became. Somebody had to pay and writer/director Martin Brest got caught in the crossfire.
Brest was originally set to direct Rain Man but resigned over creative differences. Apparently he never got over them, because Gigli revolves around a similar autistic character, this one the brother of the L.A. district attorney. In an effort to blackmail the DA, a lowlife thug enlists two contractors, Larry Gigli (Affleck) and Ricky (Lopez), to kidnap and babysit the kid. Gigli and Ricky mistrust each other, especially when Gigli learns Ricky is a lesbian and immune from his charms, but their relationship evolves in an almost interesting way as Ricky undermines Gigli’s masculinity, engineering a gender role-reversal of sorts.
Meanwhile, Brest the screenwriter undermines Brest the idea man. His notion of stylized tough guy dialogue amounts to putting words like “excoriate” and tortured syntax like “Might you know what it is I’m getting at?” in the mouths of his goombah characters. That’s a minor offense compared to Lopez’s big speech on the merits of the vagina over the penis, a monologue that must be a big hit at off-Broadway auditions these days. J-Lo is also stuck with a sub-Tarantino soliloquy on the subtleties of ripping someone’s eyeball out of its socket. It’s almost harder to listen to than “Jenny From the Block.”
As the not terribly bright protagonist, Affleck is playing to his strengths. His Gigli is like one of those blowdried dumbasses who works for Christopher on The Sopranos and ends up getting whacked for doing something really stupid. Christopher Walken makes an unusually constipated appearance, while Al Pacino shows up at the end to deliver one of his patented late-career hameos.
The critical outrage over Gigli might be understandable in a vacuum, but in the context of the Affleck oeuvre, it’s a little puzzling. A cursory check of Rotten Tomatoes shows Gigli with a freshness rating of 7% on the Tomatometer, while Reindeer Games garnered 23% and Paycheck pleased 25% of the critics. Even Surviving Christmas edged out Gigli, with an 8% freshness rating. Clearly the outrage is misplaced here. Then again, Armond White called it “the only Hollywood movie of the summer with ideas,” so maybe it’s worse than I thought.
(NOTE: Today's installment of Unwatchable first appeared in slightly different form in this High Hat piece. Sorry if you already read it, but it's not like I was gonna watch Gigli again and come up with a whole new set of thoughts about it.)
Previously on Unwatchable:
72. Meet the Spartans
73. Fascination
74. You Got Served
75. The Last Sign
76. Kickboxer 3: The Art of War