you all thought reloaded was the movie event of the year.

i have literally been waiting months for this one to come out.

i wanna see it burn.

literally.

i want the reels to combust in protest before they can be played for audiences. and the paying audience can follow suit.

i wanna see j.lo and affleck break up.

I WANT REDEMPTION.

so if you happen to see the movie, or if you wanna protect yourself and say your friend saw it, post under here.

anything you have to say on the film, let's put it here.

i'm gonna post reviews under here from critics as well.

why?

in the sake of comedy, consolidation, and karma, cause i had to listen to that jenny from the block song one too many times.

and because i can . . .

http://filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/gigli.htm

GIGLI (2003)
* (out of four)

While it doesn't live up to its hype as the worst film ever made, Martin Brest's Gigli, with its creepy contention that Ben Affleck is the cure for lesbianism, certainly makes a run for the most unintentionally hilarious film ever made. Its first mistake is in giving not one, but two charisma vortexes the leading roles, the sucking black hole this creates at the film's centre thrown into sharp relief whenever a real actor (Christopher Walken, Al Pacino) makes a cameo appearance. The most surprising thing about Gigli isn't the failed casting gambit or the gruesomely over-written dialogue (this isn't anyone's first film, after all), however, but rather the idea that Jennifer Lopez would authorize the reduction of her famously outsized posterior on the posters--abandoning (after mocking it in Maid in Manhattan--which, as it happens, was written by Brest's Meet Joe Black scribe Kevin Wade) what is arguably the only thing so far about Lopez that hasn't proven to be facile and over-hyped.

At the risk of sounding facetious, Lopez's glutes are the starlet/diva's one true thing: inevitably the locus of every scene, relegated now to Lopez's own status of in-joke in decline. But her ass was never funny to me--it was until now the equivalent of Marilyn Monroe's beauty mark: impossible to overlook, a statement of identity and individuality (one that, for Lopez, proudly encompasses and subverts a stereotype of her race and nationality), and an arguable imperfection paraded proud before the eyes of the ruling class that actually opens doors for other non-traditional beauties. When Gigli's mentally challenged character (I should clarify: the one written as mentally challenged) breaks into a Rain Man rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back," the last thing that was unique, even valuable, about the increasingly difficult-to-stomach Lopez is suddenly a smarmy, winking, gag that serves to illustrate exactly how far Lopez will go to distance herself from "the block."

The question of Lopez's marginalized mud flaps aside, the central character of Gigli is Larry Gigli (Affleck), a wimp of a mob-contract enforcer enlisted in the kidnapping of a Federal Prosecutor's brain-damaged little brother Brian (Justin Bartha, who's good here, but at what?). Not trusting the schlep to act on his own (so why trust him at all?), consigliere Louis (Lenny Venito, arguably the best thing about this mess) sends Sapphic hit-person Ricki (Lopez) to watch Gigli watching Brian. Already tangled beyond resolution, Brest thickens the plot with a few Sun Tzu quotes (notes for Brest's future reference: don't ask Brad Pitt to say "Machiavellian machinations," and don't ask Lopez to quote Sun Tzu), a few top-heavy debates on the merits of penises vs. vaginas, and a five-minute walk-on from Christopher Walken that represents the only moment in the picture with the kind of quirky, intelligent heat to which Brest so nakedly aspires. By the end, it can't come as any surprise that the antagonistic Gigli and Ricki end up rolling in the hay; that Ricki, by extension, has been shown the error of her lesbian ways (and why not--the only other lesbian in the picture is a psychopath); and that lovable gimp Brian has ingratiated himself into the hearts of our hardened criminals. It's a dysfunctional family, damnit, but it's ours.

With a score that marries perversely jaunty organs with the kind of guitar work Clapton did on Roger Waters' "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" (ethereal, eerie, inappropriate), the picture smacks of desperation and pretension. It rips off the "word a day gangster" conceit from Kangaroo Jack, of all things, and doesn't offer dialogues so much as a death march of awkward monologues. The pair of Affleck and Lopez equally not up to the task, it is she who takes the brunt of the abuse with a much-publicized turkey/oral sex come-on ("you know, gobble gobble") and an extended drone about something called "Cheng Woi Mai," or, "the rip that takes the past"--a fictional martial arts move that obliterates the visual cortex, thus stealing all memory of what's been seen. It's just one of many moments that are uncomfortably self-reflexive--by this point in the film, a little Cheng Woi Mai is just what the doctor ordered. Not helping things is Lopez's inexplicably worsening Betsy-Wetsy lisp that transforms a line like "brutal street thug" into "bruel threet fug."

With a weird sentimental payoff and unlikely epilogue tacked on after a disastrous test screening (it wouldn't have made a difference where the film ended, the problem is with the film starting), credit is due Brest for remaining at the least committed to his voice no matter the cost. His pictures always non-traditional (even Beverly Hills Cop is surprisingly stately in its development and resolution), Brest is at his best in presenting the broad, the theatrical, even the melancholy through his word jumble (Walken can say "absconded" without irony; Lopez can't even read in the film without moving her lips), and at his worst when trying to justify surprise moments of spontaneous lovemaking and unlikely romance (see also: Meet Joe Black).

Brest's major failing, though, now and always, is not in that rare quality of being true to himself and his vision, for better or worse, but by having too much confidence in his ability to mold the shallow end of the A-list to his difficult vision. It's doubtful to me that, say, Terrence Malick would trust baggage-laden duo Affleck and Lopez to anchor his next picture--leave that tragic miscalculation to Kevin Smith. It's telling that Brest's best film, Midnight Run, also boasts of Brest's most consistent cast (Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro), with no Chris O'Donnells to offset the Al Pacinos, or zombie Pitts and Claire Forlanis skewing the tally against Anthony Hopkins. The question of whether Gigli would have been not just a better film but a good film with actors actually trained as actors is a fair one--the real meat to the hypothetical question (probably a rhetorical hypothetical, really) lies in the fact of its asking. The film has potential (a scene where Brian celebrates his proximity to a personal nirvana, for example, carries surprising pathos), and for all of its plot conveniences and bad editing, Gigli attracts (justifiable) venom mostly for its cast: the mortal blunder of believing that either Affleck or Lopez has Brest's confidence and courage to look foolish, and the nobility to fail with principle.-Walter Chaw

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93150,00.html

Review: Ben and J-Lo's 'Gigli': It's Turkey Time, Gobble, Gobble

It's not so easy to make a great howler of a bad movie. In recent years, Madonna 's made more than her share: "Shanghai Surprise," "Swept Away," "Who's That Girl," among them.

In 2001, Mariah Carey starred in "Glitter," which has only aged badly since its laughable premiere. And then there's "Showgirls," "Striptease," "The Postman," "Waterworld," "Ishtar," and the perceived king of kings, "Heaven's Gate."

Now add to the very top of the list, "Gigli" — directed by Martin Brest, who actually has another title on the list already: "Meet Joe Black."

Witless, coarse, and vulgar, "Gigli" is worse than its advance buzz could have indicated. Starring real-life tabloid lovers Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, the film — if you can call it that — is a total, mindless disaster. Sitting in a screening last night with reviewers and feature writers, I could only think of one word: stupefying.

As many who were there muttered on the way out: "What were they thinking?"

First, the acting: Lopez and Affleck may have chemistry at home, but they have none here. Affleck comes off the worst. As hitman Larry Gigli, Affleck seems to be doing a bad imitation of James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano.

A thuggish Brooklyn-esque accent comes and goes, and Affleck never figures out whether he's a good guy or a bad guy. While these gears are turning in his head, you can't help notice that he's a hitman wearing a luxurious Gucci leather jacket and gorgeous silk tops. He also appears to be wearing Ted Danson's toupee from "Cheers."

J-Lo does a little better, but not much as a lesbian hitwoman who is nonetheless smitten with Affleck. She makes her first appearance wearing a midriff-revealing halter-top to show off her abs and rear end, and it just keeps getting better.

At one point Lopez is featured in a yoga position called "the crow," which is photographed as if she were a kangaroo hoisted on its hind legs and ready for mating. As I once heard Anna Wintour say of Clint Eastwood with matted hair in a rainstorm scene, "It's not a good look for you."

Like Ben, who actually says the word "heart-throb-a-rama," J-Lo is saddled with ridiculous, offensive, unfortunate dialogue, much of which can't be quoted in proper publications.

Herewith some of her declarations: "It's turkey time. Gobble, gobble." "A penis is like a sea slug or a long toe." "I thought you wanted to be my bitch."

There's a fourth line, but it can't be repeated here, concerning her offer to perform a sex act on Affleck for 12 hours. Another character, doing an unintentional Joe Pesci imitation from "Goodfellas," later describes Lopez's lesbian with a term that should have women's groups on both sides demanding a recall vote on the screenwriter.

Trust me, the dialogue in "Gigli" is so awful that the groans just come faster and faster. It is also unnecessarily vulgar. I counted the "f-word" no fewer than 15 times in the first 10 minutes and then lost track.

Lopez also makes a long speech to Affleck in which she draws analogies between her female anatomy and one's mouth, ending in a particular vulgarity that sent at least two New York Times writers right out of the theatre.

There are other actors in the film. Sadly, newcomer Justin Bartha , who plays a "Rain Man"-like autistic character stolen directly from that movie — but without the manual — makes a very bad first impression.

Will he turn out to be a "thumbless, bleeding halfwit," as Lopez's character posits? It's hard to say since Bartha, not getting any direction from Brest, slips from autism to Tourette's Syndrome to ADD to simply being annoying.

But the "Rain Man" lifts are painful to watch. Instead of being obsessed with "Wapner," for example, this character only wants to see "Baywatch." Again, what could Brest, who wrote and directed this junk, have been thinking?

Al Pacino, whom Brest directed to an Oscar in the very bad "Scent of a Woman" 11 years ago, appears in one interminable scene as a New York crime boss. This one bloated moment may completely unravel Pacino's esteemed career from "The Godfather" to "Insomnia."

His expressionless, frozen face — though included in the film's trailer as a big deal — appears about three-fourths of the way through the film. It's not clear even if Affleck and Lopez, who Brest cuts to occasionally for stupefied reactions, were even on the set when Pacino delivers his numbing monologue. The fact that it ends in his character committing a sudden act of bloody violence doesn't help.

The only performance worth seeing in "Gigli" (which rhymes, Affleck says often, with "really") is another cameo, this one by Christopher Walken as a police detective. When Walken steps into the film, "Gigli" suddenly becomes full of color and oxygen — two things that Lopez and Affleck lack.

Unfortunately, Walken's scene is meant to explain the plot. But it's pretty clear that the actor has no idea what he's saying; he just says it so wonderfully that it doesn't matter. Watch the pause he takes at the end of the scene. It's a brilliant comment on the nonsense set before him.

and Scent of a Woman was good.

\\someone.else.is.gonna.come.and.clean.it.up//

____________________________

http://instagram.com/yogikenan
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http://stackoverflow.com/users/43089/triptych
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damn....that almost made me change my sig

***************************
down on the upside

gigli focus groups demand new ending in which both affleck and lopez die

http://www.theonion.com/onion3929/gigli_focus_groups.html

HOLLYWOOD, CA—Focus groups at advance screenings for Gigli, a romantic comedy starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez set to open nationwide July 30, have demanded a new ending in which both stars die "in as brutal a manner as possible," sources at Sony Pictures said Tuesday.


"The movie is pretty good, I guess," read one comment card from a test-screening audience in Culver City, CA. "I liked the Al Pacino character, but I had a hard time buying Jennifer Lopez as a lesbian. I also really, really wanted Larry and Ricki to die, to get shot or blown up or run over by something. I would prefer to see the blood and the looks on their faces."

On Monday, 3,000 people in markets as varied as Dallas, Chicago, Albany, Atlanta, and Seattle screened Gigli, a gangster-themed romantic comedy written and directed by Martin Brest, in which lowly thug Affleck lets his love for hitwoman Lopez get in the way of a high-risk mob assignment. Of those viewers, 2,965 "strongly agreed" that the ending should be changed to include a graphic scene in which its main characters die.

"Many participants wrote 'shot to death' in the space provided for comments, probably thinking that it fit in with the gangster characters' stated realities," Columbia Pictures director of marketing Peter Zitterman said. "Some comments showed a lot of careful thought, such as 'point blank through head from right side,' 'both at once with single shot from elephant gun,' and 'several hundred times, with multiple camera angles showing their bodies jerking as they're shredded with a heavy hosing of lead, spraying the lens with gobbets of meat and bone and blood, with the sheer number of fist-sized exit wounds obviously precluding any sequel.' And shootings weren't the only ideas suggested, believe me."

According to the exit cards, other popular methods of achieving Lopez and Affleck's on-screen demise included car bombs, multiple stab wounds, acid baths, rabid wolf attacks, lightning strikes, and, in one case, a "hammer party."

"We never expected this kind of reaction," Zitterman said. "We've had odd results from focus groups before, but I don't recall an audience ever agreeing on such a sweeping change. If only we had done this survey in pre-production."

Although the various test audiences differed on the preferred methods of death, they seemed unanimous on one point.

"We were very surprised at how many viewers thought that, no matter what, Affleck and Lopez should not be entwined in a romantic embrace at the time of their deaths," Zitterman said. "Everyone was perfectly clear on that."

Although Brest said he is satisfied with the final cut of Gigli, he briefly considered incorporating some of the test audience's ideas into the film.

"The danger here is succumbing to what people in the business call 'option paralysis'—being caught with so many good ideas that you're not sure which one to use," Brest said. "Getting shot is fine, but what about an automobile fire in which Ben and Jennifer are shown perishing in a slow-motion montage, their newfound love discarded as they try desperately to claw their way past each other's melting bodies, while slowly roasting to death in their own fat? You'd be surprised at how many people came up with that one. Or having them crawl through a field of broken glass while a safely booted and gloved Christopher Walken casually advances on them with a spray bottle of acid and a pair of bolt-cutters? I must say, a part of me loves the idea of them chewing each other to death during a 14-minute dolly shot."

Added Brest: "Believe me, after the singular experience of working with these two for several months, it would be a joy to get back together just to make these changes."

Even if time were not prohibitive, Columbia executives remained skeptical about the validity of the focus-group results.

"I find it hard to believe that audiences would harbor hostility toward such major media figures as J. Lo and Ben," Zitterman said. "With her magazine covers, clothing and perfume lines, and constant radio presence; his roles in Daredevil and Project Greenlight; and their recent joint appearances on Dateline NBC and numerous entertainment shows, how could anyone wish for anything but a resolution that unites these two attractive, highly visible celebrities?"

Insiders confirm that time constraints will prevent the much-requested death-scene additions to Gigli, which already underwent several days of fine-tuning when earlier focus groups noted a lack of romantic chemistry from the real-life couple. In light of the results, however, director Kevin Smith has said he will consider adding a gruesome double homicide to his Affleck-Lopez comedy Jersey Girl, due in theaters next year.

Gigli: D

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/source-1016/reviews.php?cats=&letter=g&sortby=movie&page=1&rid=1179470

The Story: A hit man named Gigli (Affleck) and a hit woman (Lopez) are assigned to kidnap and baby-sit the mentally challenged brother (Bartha) of a powerful district attorney.

The Good: Not much is good about this film, but Jennifer, I must admit turns in a very sexy performance. Her dialogue is horribly written, but she looks so good while saying it. Al Pacino does make a pretty good cameo that is fun to watch but is overshadowed by the awkwardness of the bad scene.

The Bad: This is the kind of film you make before you are famous, not after. This definitely goes in the “what were you thinking?” category. The writing is bad and the acting is worse. Ben’s film decisions need some rethinking, and he keeps going the way of the Stallone rather than the Willis. (Actually, Stallone did have a number one movie last week, as bad as it may have been, so maybe that was a poor example). All I am trying to say is that I was in pain for over two hours watching this piece of garbage.

The Summary: Gigli is so horrible I had to go cleanse my palate afterward by watching Glitter.

Howlers abound but like Paul Verhoeven's 'Showgirls' the picture is never dull.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/source-570/reviews.php?cats=&letter=g&sortby=movie&page=3&rid=1179415

ROTTEN (C-)

Press notes for "Gigli" have the usual disclaimer: "The
characters and incidents portrayed and the names herein are
fictitious and any similarity to the name, character or history of
any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

As with Paul Verhoeven's 1995 movie "Showgirls," the
statement has as much utility for those who have seen "Gigli" as
has the proverbial bicycle for a fish. And you can bet that Martin
Brest ("Meet Joe Black," "Scent of a Woman," "Beverly Hills
Cop") will insist as did Verhoeven eight years ago that he
means his film to be taken seriously and not as camp, parody or
anything but a literal take on how human beings can radically
change one another during a period of a few days in the City of
Angels. Brest is no stranger to implausibilities, as those who sat
through his 157-minute "Scnet of a Woman" can testify. Taking
off from what critic David Thomson states in his wonderful "The
New Biographical Dictionary of Film," "the suggestion that any
army would ever have made Al Pacino a colonel still seems to
me the greatest comic coup in the picture," anyone who can
view Pacino as a top-of-the-line gangster given the role of an
insane person who is tamed by J.Lo's monologue has a good
imagination.

As the director of the 1984 "Beverly Hills Cop," Brest is no
stranger to pictures about warped people who must learn to get
along. At least there was no doubt that comedy was the name
of the game given Eddie Murphy's role as a guy who always
with-it. The comedy and violent action could be accepted.
"Gigli," by contrast, does not click because neither Jennifer
Lopez nor Ben Affleck comes across as a match for Murphy's
comic style. By using them as a two people, strangers to each
other until a fateful meeting in a run-down section of town who
by steps reach out to each other, Brest is playing the romance
game whose principal maxim is "Keep the two people apart in a
state of sexual tension until they inevitably resolve their
differences at the conclusion." Fair enough. That's what we
expect, but however implausible their connection (she's a
lesbian and he is straight), we've given a buddy movie, a
gangster theme, a coming-of-age story, all executed in far less
time than was given to Brest's "Meet Joe Black." Perhaps such
a jumble of genres could click, but so many scenes are
outrageously unbelievable that the best the company can hope
for are unintentional laughs by the carload.

The story takes off when a punk hit-man, Louis (Lenny Venito)
gives his subordinate Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) an assignment.
Kidnap Brian (Justin Bartha), the brain-damaged brother of a
federal prosecutor, and agree to release the teenager only if the
D.A. drops all charges against one Starkman (Al Pacino).
Because Louis has little faith in Gigli's competence, he assigns
another gangster, Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), to manipulate her way
into Gigli's apartment to watch over him while he in turn is
instructed to watch over her. During the course of their brief
relationship, the undereducated Gigli,no match for Ricki's
intelligence and charisma, is forced to reevaluate his life as a
small-timer with a pompadour who thinks the year is 1960.
When Louis orders Gigli to cut off the boy's thumb and mail it to
the prosecutor, both Gigli and his co-conspirator, Ricki, have
second thoughts about the job and about their chosen
profession third thoughts, we could add, once Ricki and Gigli
are introduced to a terrifying Starkman, who reads both Louis
and them the riot act as only Al Pacino can do.

Aside from cutting off more genres than he can chew in a
single, short film, Brest seals the fate of the story by a string of
situations so unbelievable that we can accept Austin Powers as
a legitimate, competent special agent before we can go along
with any of the myriad of jaw-dropping incredulousness in
"Gigli," to wit:

If Larry Gigli was ashamed of his name which no-one can
pronounce why not go by a different one? How is Gigli able to
walk the mentally challenged boy out of the institution without
anyone's checking his identity? Why do both Gigli and Ricki
assume that the boy will stay quietly in the bedroom while a
federal agent (Christopher Walken in the best few minutes of
the film) is in the living room questioning and intimidating Gigli
about the young man's whereabouts? When the deal with the
sawed-off thumb fails to convince the federal prosecutor that the
digit belongs to his brother, why does Starkman take out his
anger on Louis, who delivered the order correctly but had his
order ignored by Ricki and Gigli? Why do the crew and cast of
Baywatch, which the kid was so eager to see, allow the young
man on the set clothed in a leather jacket while everyone else
is in swim attire and accept him as just another dancer? Why
would lesbians in the audience accept the realization of a male
fantasy that if the right guy comes along, he can "cure" the
woman of her sexual desire for other women? Why do Ricki
and Gigli engage in their long-awaited first sexual encounter
fully clothed? How has the mentally challenged young man who
takes to Larry as a substitute dad become virtually articulate,
chucking his incoherent babbling by the conclusion of the story
after just a few days' interaction with Gigli?

Like "Showgirls," however, the movie is not a bore. You won't
look at your watch but will pay attention, eager to take in yet
another howler. In fact, paradoxically, some of the theatrical
goings-on such as the monologue indulged in by Ricki while
she is performing erotic yoga position, the crazed speech by
Starkman, even the knowing looks exchanged between the
detective and the gangster are attention-getters. What's more
as this year Rain Man, NYU graduate and New York resident
Justin Bartha turns in a fine debut performance, a guy who does
not appear overly intimidated by the heavy hitters he's with.

Ford Fairlane says that the Affleck J-Lo flick GIGLI is the worst film ever!

http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=13394

Just saw Gigli with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Never have I seen such a disasterous film as this. Martin Brest has finally lost it. I loved Beverly Hills Cop like everyone else. I don't know how much of War Games was his, but I liked that. And I think that Midnight Run is a perfect film. But this movie is all over the place. Matrin Brest doesn't seem to know how to use an editor anymore. Everyone in the theater was writhing for the last hour of the film.

Affleck is Gigli, the hitman with the last name that no one can pronounce. his boss gives him a job to pick up this retarded kid from a hospital, b/c his brother is the prosecuting attorney that is trying to put mafioso Al Pacino behind bars.

This is stupid part number one.

Affleck is able to just walk in and walk out of the hospital with this kid. Not only is this whole part stupid, but from this point on the movie is Rain Man with a hitman, or at least it tries to be. Rain Man however was moving, and this film is just retarded.

On with the story.

J Lo shows up at his apartment where they are keeping the retarded kid. She turns out to be another hit man, ordered to work the same job and keep an eye on Gigli. Why any mob boss would ever think that a good idea is to put the very necessary hostage at the hands of two trigger happy, ego stroking hit men (women), and have them stay at the same house is beyond me. But logic escapes this entire movie. From this plot point, to the taking the patient out of the hospital, there's more. So Affleck wants to bang Lopez, but she's a lesbian. This goes on and on and on, and I swear to God they put footage from Chasing Amy in here, b/c all it is is Affleck and Lopez arguing about gay vs, straight, straight sex vs. gay sex, women vs. men, masculine vs. feminine, on and on and on. It is so boring. They even do one of the scenes with Lopez stretching in sexual positions, where you still end up thinking 'END THIS SCENE NOW!!'

Finally, Gigli's boss wants them to cut off a thumb, but they've grown to like Raymond (I know his name is Brian, but he is Raymond w/o Hoffman) Raymond raps old early 90's rap songs, and dances in public, and curses with his terrets syndrome. you know, he's cure and funny. And in love with the show Baywatch, and don't even get me started on that. Without giving away too much, Gigli cant bring himself to cut off the thumb, and this leads to a falling out with the mob, but falling in love with J. Lo. You see, her ex lover shows up, and slices her wrists. Because its a comedy, and that's what people do in comedies. Suicide. I know, fucking hilarious. AFter that, she takes her lover to the hospital, and then goes home and starts fucking Ben Affleck. Because we all know that lesbians aren't REALLY lesbians. Not with Ben Affleck in the room. Not J. Lo. No. So, the mob closes in, good guys become bad guys, and Affleck and Lopez have to make lifelong decisions. I say this because I don't want to totally ruin the film for those of you who are going to see it.

I can say that this is the worst film that I have seen in about three years. It never knows what it wants to be. Lopez disappears in one of the worst (if not the worst) farewell speeches ever put on celluloid. It has moments of comedy, then romance, then depressing suicde film, followed by a funny scene with Raymond singing Baby's Got Back. Nothing fits.

Save your money and go see something else.

Avoid this like the plague.

The only single redeeming value this film has is J. Lo's nipples piercing through her shirt in the scene in the hospital. Even the sex scene has her covered in a robe THE ENTIRE TIME!!!! Annoying.

Jen and Ben get Gigli with it, and -- lucky us! -- we get to watch.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2003-07-31/film.html/1/index.html

For a few minutes, at least, things don't look so bad. Watching Ben Affleck swagger around as the thuggish title character of Gigli ("Rhymes with really," he tells us, twice) is amusing for a bit. Affleck's eminently qualified for the role, actually -- that of a low-level hood pretending to be more important and talented than he truly is. The laughs may not be of the intentional kind, but we'll take what we can get, especially since Affleck seems to be doing his damnedest to impersonate the similarly square-jawed Edward Burns, right down to voice imitation.

Gigli gets assigned to kidnap a "psychologically challenged" youngster, brother of a prosecutor who's making trouble for a New York mobster. Said youngster, Brian (newcomer Justin Bartha), has an affliction that seems to be a vague amalgamation of autism, Tourette's, and white-rapper syndrome (yes, he periodically gives lisping shout-outs to his homies, and recites '90s rap hits verbatim), all of which conveniently go into remission whenever the plot calls for it. Anyway, his initial reaction to Affleck is to repeatedly call him stupid and swear at him, which at least gives us one character to identify with for a while. Then you notice that Bartha doesn't look to have studied any actual handicapped people in creating his character -- just Rain Man, and possibly Malibu's Most Wanted.

From there, however, the plot rests upon a number of suppositions only slightly less convincing than the one writer-director Martin Brest (helmsman of the similarly endless-seeming star vanity projects Scent of a Woman and Meet Joe Black) apparently made about Affleck being a skilled thespian. To wit: One must suppose that the best way to get a hired goon to do his job correctly is to send over a scantily clad hot lesbian bearing the stripper-esque pseudonym of "Ricki" (Jennifer Lopez) to do seminude yoga. Oh yeah, that'll keep Mr. Gigli focused on the job at hand. It helps if this woman is neither tough nor intimidating, but rather issues empty threats from time to time. It goes without saying that it's hard to be scared of mobsters stupid enough to hire "J. Lo" and "B. Af" when, presumably, there must be at least one thug for hire in all of Los Angeles who looks like, say, Danny Trejo.

It's also a given here, much as it is in Danish cinema these days, that the mentally retarded are all noble, innocent beings who can melt the hearts of lowlifes with their mere presence. Additionally, sexual orientation is a lifestyle choice that can be transcended by Ben Affleck simply because he has a hidden feminine side (Indeed, that's a plot point). If converting lesbians isn't sufficiently impressive, how about his ability to cure serious mental problems simply by offering a pointer or two on how to pick up chicks?

Before Gigli's two hours are up, you will also hear Lopez deliver a lengthy monologue about eye-gouging, see Lainie Kazan's ass cheeks and cleavage (she's the mom from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and plays Gigli's bisexual mom here), hear Lopez describing Affleck's penis, hear Bartha talk about ejaculation, see Affleck try to cut off a human thumb with a plastic knife, and watch fish devour bloody bits of brain. Affleck and Lopez also participate in the worst sex scene ever, but you knew that was inevitable, after what feels like an endless courtship. How exactly are we supposed to believe these two are hardened criminals, when they're making cutesy eyes at one another from the get-go? She threatens to kick his ass early in the game, but never gives any legitimate indication that she's capable of such a feat.

While you're trying to tie yourself a noose out of Red Vines (or Twizzlers, depending on the theater), you may be momentarily distracted by Christopher Walken and Al Pacino getting one scene apiece in an attempt to win back your attention. It's a stalling tactic that works only until you realize that once each scene is over, the movie's going to go back to the same old way it was before.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Remember back when Ben and Jen seemed like such hot upcoming prospects? Ben was the one Kevin Smith protégée who looked like he could go all the way to the top with his blend of sensitivity and humor, and Jennifer was the perfect mix of beauty and toughness in Out of Sight and Money Train (hell, I'll even throw Anaconda in there). So what happened? Oh, right: Ben got a thoroughly undeserved screenwriting Oscar, and Jennifer decided that playing Selena wasn't enough of a diva fix. Both signed on for Gigli, became Hollywood's power couple, and somehow have managed to exhaust their novelty with the media right about now, as the film's finally being released.

Though the two leads, laughably referred to as "icons" in the press notes, became a couple during the course of filming, the material here is just too easy to make fun of in the context of their subsequent relationship. So let's go for it: One of Jennifer's first lines to Ben is "I'll be in and out before you know it, I promise, I'll just leave a faint scent." Think that was also uttered the night of their first date? Later, she opines, "I done some bad things, but I didn't sign onto this to be a real street thug." Ask ex-beau P. Diddy where she may have found her motivation on that one.

The best line in the movie, hands down, goes to Walken, who stares Affleck down and says, "You don't know nuthin' -- I can tell just by lookin' atcha." That Chris always was an insightful fellow.

So how bad, in the final analysis, is Gigli? The best that can be said about it here is that it doesn't beat out The Ladies Man as the most abrasively awful film of the past five years, nor does it top Battlefield Earth for sheer misguided lunacy, though whoever chose to green light a film about a mobster babysitting a retarded youngster who helps him to "convert" a lesbian really should be fired. Affleck's acting is often cardboard enough to be amusing, but Lopez delivers what may be the worst performance of her entire career (including, yes, The Wedding Planner), looking in every scene like she's just waiting for the last take so she can go home. Twice she delivers speeches supposed to make her look tough-as-nails; both times, we have to wonder how the other characters onscreen could possibly be convinced. A recent episode of South Park suggested that a fourth-grader's hand puppet could turn in a better performance than Ms. Lopez, and in the case of Gigli, it's hard to argue.

1/4 stars

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=743

Romantic comedy. Mob spoof. Dysfunctional family melodrama. Rain Man Redux. Indeed, Gigli wishes to have a little something for everyone. Though Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez fell in love on the set of the film, it’s difficult not to look at this shrill mess as a vanity project tailor-made for the couple and targeted at anyone who gets their daily celebrity dish from the E! network. When a confused Affleck stares into the horizon at the end of Martin Brest’s creepy-crawly romantic comedy, it’s anyone’s guess what’s running through the actor’s head. Think of him as a Columbia exec who has to contemplate both the surreal uplift he’s managed to orchestrate by bringing a mentally handicapped teen lothario to the set of a would-be Baywatch location shoot and the likelihood that he’ll get his own “Hollywood ending” as recompense. He does get it, but said ending is so cleverly vague that it should not only excite those most likely to embrace this claptrap but also keep GLAAD at bay. Sure, New Age mob contractor Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) inevitably hops in the sack with the thoroughly repulsive Larry Gigli (Affleck), but the film doesn’t so much suggest that a Guido can scare the lesbian out of any woman cloyingly fond of Pilates as much as it acknowledges that sex is oftentimes a mission of mercy. Because Brest spends much of the film’s running time torturing his audience with a series of on-screen home invasions (characters are constantly barging into rooms and causing elaborate scenes, but the film’s genre-indecisiveness is certainly more offensive), it’s difficult to follow the otherwise shabby plot. Ostensibly, the story follows Ricki and Gigli’s attempts to kidnap a federal prosecutor’s mentally handicapped younger brother, Brian (Justin Bartha), and use the kid as leverage in a case against a hot-tempered low-life played by Al Pacino. Gigli pretends to be a sophisticated comedy of the sexes yet it’s written with the adolescent gusto of a 50-year-old who’s finally discovered that a penis goes inside a vagina. When the hypocritical Ricki isn’t soothing Larry’s savage beast with useless metaphoric banter (he says: “In every relationship there’s a bull and a cow”; she says: “The mouth is the twin sister of the vagina”), Bartha’s curious idiot savant (who’s seemingly afflicted with Tourette Syndrome as well) provides more immediate and deliberate comic relief. Despite your better judgement, you may want to stay past the film’s mid-point or you’ll miss Bartha launching into an impromptu performance of “Baby Got Back” when Affleck begins to hack off a dead man’s thumb using a plastic knife. The horrible noise evokes the much sweeter sound of turntablism and doubles as a nod to Lopez’s infamous posterior. If only any other scene in this brain-dead film was anywhere near as clever or original.

having fun ricky?

>having fun ricky?

like a kid in a candy store on christmas day with a kaleidoscope.

J.Lo and Affleck: We Will Never Work Together Again

http://us.imdb.com/PeopleNews/#2

Superstar couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are so distraught at the critical backlash to their movie Gigli that they have vowed never to work together again. Sources close to the twosome - who met and fell in love on the set of the gangster comedy - say that although in public they have defended the flick, behind closed doors Latina lovely J.Lo is very upset at the bad press. And the sexy pair believe their incredible fame and the gossip surrounding their upcoming marriage doomed the movie to failure before it was released. A source says, "Ben's brushing it off but J.Lo's taking it personally. They've admitted their relationship is more of a hindrance than a boost to a movie."

And the sexy pair
>believe their incredible fame and the gossip surrounding
>their upcoming marriage doomed the movie to failure before
>it was released.

Their relationship didn't doom this film, they're horrible acting is what doomed this film.

____________________________

FUCK DONALD TRUMP

J.Lo, please! You know she thought them being a couple would bring people to the box office to see them and now she's just mad that she was wrong! Some of the media has said they think Ben and Jen will stay together until February, long enough to promote Jersey Girl together. But in light of this, maybe she's thinking they'll get more viewers for Jersey Girl if they break up before then! ks

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"I predict...................Nadal will embarrass dudes" - Deebot

http://www.facebook.com/kurlyswirl

I be Scrobblin': http://www.last.fm/user/TasteeTreat/

>J.Lo, please! You know she thought them being a couple would
> bring people to the box office to see them and now she's
>just mad that she was wrong! then! ks

they weren't a couple before this film.

~G.D.

>>J.Lo, please! You know she thought them being a couple would
>> bring people to the box office to see them and now she's
>>just mad that she was wrong! then! ks
>
>they weren't a couple before this film.

Yes, I know that. I was referring to all the pre-movie release promoting they've been doing, including that Dateline interview. ks

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"I predict...................Nadal will embarrass dudes" - Deebot

http://www.facebook.com/kurlyswirl

I be Scrobblin': http://www.last.fm/user/TasteeTreat/

Gigli: F

http://www.oneguysopinion.com/review.asp?ID=1026

“It’s turkey time,” sultry Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) tells Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) toward the close of this new romantic comedy from Martin Brest. She knows what she’s talking about, though the remark would have been more honest had it been made at the very start of the movie. You might have thought that the title is pronounced “Jiggly,” in recognition of the ample endowments of Ms. Lopez and the effort she expends in displaying them. But as the titular character explains not once but twice early on, his name rhymes with “really.” As in: “This is a Gigli bad movie,” a statement that might just become a commonplace. It’s difficult to understand what was going through Brest’s mind when he penned this disaster, which goes wrong in so many ways that one can barely keep count of them. To begin with, the underlying premise is a dud: Lou (Lenny Venito), a sleazy California mobster, directs his klutzy enforcer (Affleck) to abduct Brian (Justin Bartha), the brother of a federal prosecutor, in order to pressure the guy to drop a case he’s building against Lou’s east coast boss. Then he saddles Gigli with an unwanted partner, the fetching Ricki. It’s inevitable that the unwilling duo will grow fond not only of their hostage, but also of each other. So far, so bad. But Brest makes this dreary formula worse with several abominable variations. One is to make Brian a mentally-challenged kid, and then tastelessly to portray his disability however his fancy takes him. At first it appears that the boy has Tourette’s, blurting out vulgarities spontaneously; but as the plot wears on he becomes just charmingly slow and docile. Then, in a truly misguided choice, Brest identifies Ricki as a lesbian, making it necessary--in order to explain the inevitable spark that builds between her and Gigli--to suggest that all it takes for her to “jump the fence,” as Larry so elegantly puts it at one point, is meeting an irresistible stud like the lunkheaded hit-man. (The plot twist also results in a perfectly awful sequence in which Ricki’s jealous former partner, played by Missy Crider, breaks in on the pair and misunderstands their relationship. It further means that Affleck has now starred in the best picture ever made about a straight guy falling for a lesbian--Kevin Smith’s “Chasing Amy”--and the worst one, too.) But that’s not all. Presumably recognizing that the flimsy kidnapping scenario won’t support a feature-length movie, even with the long, badly written speeches he gives to each of his leads (Affleck’s, with their frequent sexual slurs, are particularly embarrassing), Brest has added what amount to histrionic cadenzas for three guest stars. The first features Christopher Walken as a verbally florid but singularly obtuse cop who drops in to grill Gigli about the kid who’s disappeared. The second involves Lainie Kazan as Gigli’s raucous mother; here we’re treated to a shot of Kazan’s bare buttocks--a sight we could well do without. And finally Al Pacino shows up to rant and rage mercilessly as the big boss whom the prosecutor has targeted. It’s easy to guess why Pacino agreed to do this grotesquely overwritten scene: he won his Oscar in Brest’s “Scent of a Woman,” and might have considered degrading himself here a suitable gesture of thankfulness. But neither Walken nor Kazan have similar debts to pay. One could go on indefinitely about the appalling aspects of “Gigli,” from its ludicrous contrivances (we’re asked to believe that Larry and Ricki can not only keep the kid in Gigli’s apartment for days without getting caught, but that they can drive him around in a convertible and take him out to eat without anyone noticing, although a massive search must be underway) to the really vulgar emphasis the story puts on Brian’s obsession with sex (his fantasies involving a jiggly TV show actually become the basis for the idiotic but supposedly uplifting finale). One might also point out that even on the technical level the picture is mediocre. But it’s the acting that’s the ultimate insult--not just in the embarrassing cameos by Walken, Kazan and Pacino, but in the leads. Affleck, who’s done some roles very well (see “Changing Lanes,” for instance), plays Gigli as if he were doing a summer-stock version of “The Sopranos”--everything in the performance is overinflected and amateurish. Lopez doesn’t come on so strong, and so she’s not quite as terrible--merely bland. (A workout sequence borders on mild pornography, however.) One feels compassion for Bartha, who’s really trapped in an impossible role, not only poorly written but blatantly offensive (especially when compared to instances when characters such as this are properly depicted--just think of “Gilbert Grape”); he can take comfort in the fact that other young actors have survived similar indignities. But one doesn’t feel anything for the scenery-chewing Crider or Venito but a profound sense of shame. I’m sure that all of us wish Affleck and Lopez the best in their much-reported private lives, and their chemistry off-screen may well be extraordinary. On the basis of this fiasco, however, it’s clear that on screen Ben and J-Lo are no Tracy and Hepburn--they’re more like the Sean Penn and Madonna of “Shanghai Surprise.” And their movie is just as rotten as that one.

Gigli: 1.5/4

http://www.movienavigator.org/gigli.htm

As moviegoers, we suffer through dozens of cliché-riddled romantic-comedies each year. I can think of six such movies, all formulaic and all indistinguishable from one another, which were released since the beginning of 2003. Gigli is an unconventional romantic-comedy, the type of movie that is rarely financed by large studios. It is also living proof that films require more than a deviation from the standard formula to be enjoyable.

Gigli stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, the highly-publicized couple who have appeared in more tabloid magazines than both Lobster Boy and Bigfoot combined. The press has expressed much skepticism towards Ben and J. Lo’s on-screen chemistry, and unjustly so. While the lovebirds have both gelled better with other on-screen partners in their previous work (Affleck with Gwyneth Paltrow in Bounce/Lopez with George Clooney in Out of Sight), in this case, I’d blame the material they have to work with more than the lovers themselves.

Ben Affleck plays the title character, Larry Gigli (pronounced Gee-ly), a second-rate loanshark who is constantly belittled by his hardass boss (Lenny Venito). His latest assignment is to kidnap the younger brother of a Los Angeles prosecutor, who happens to be mentally handicap, and hold him hostage so that a renowned mobster (Al Pacino) can resolve his legal problems. Since Larry is considered to be a fuck up, aid is sent to him in the form of Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), a smooth talking criminal who (sweet irony!) happens to be gay.

So Affleck and Lopez baby-sit Brian (Justin Bartha), the handicap teenager who also suffers from tourettes, while building loads and loads of sexual tension.

As one of Hollywood's most charismatic actors, Ben Affleck can barely be imagined in a bland role, but in Gigli, his character could not be engaging even if he had Will Hunting as a best friend. Larry spends the entire film cursing and overreacting to every situation, keeping the audience at a distance. I had checked out emotionally from the film long before the end credits. Affleck does provide numerous laughs, but I can’t think of many actors who’d be capable of doing so were they cast in the same role.

I do wish writer-director Martin Breast would understand the difference between unconventional humor and inappropriate humor. A suicide attempt certainly isn’t typical in romantic-comedies, but if the scene does not benefit the story (in the case of Gigli, it’s not even relevant to the story), then I usually feel like the director is killing time. Between Meet Joe Black and Gigli, Breast has killed a lot of time.

How does a filmmaker who is responsible for some of the most entertaining movies in history (Midnight Run, Beverly Hills Cop) churn-out something like Gigli? Who knows, but in a film where the only character you remotely care about is an obscenity-spewing adolescent lifted right out of Rain Man, you know some elements are not working.

Chief among those elements ‘not working’ is the romance. Or, more appropriately, the complete absence of romance. I can’t remember the last time two characters were forced this forcefully to fall in love. Sigh. I just hope Gigli doesn’t do any damage towards the second teaming of Ben and Jen, Jersey Girl, set for release next year. -Shaun Sages
GRADE: C-

Huh...Wouldn't 1.5/4 be an F, or maybe at most a D? :-P ks

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"I predict...................Nadal will embarrass dudes" - Deebot

http://www.facebook.com/kurlyswirl

I be Scrobblin': http://www.last.fm/user/TasteeTreat/

>Huh...Wouldn't 1.5/4 be an F, or maybe at most a D? :-P ks

the actual reviewer in this case came up with the letter grade. there's the difference.

most important number to remember-9. as in the 9 dollars they're not getting from me.

Well, I paid $6.75 at the matinee, and I DEFINITELY feel like Brest and the Ben-Lo "team" owe me a refund.

>>most important number to remember-9. as in the 9 dollars
>they're not getting from me.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Oooo baby I like it raw. Oooo baby I like it RAAAW!(c)ODB- Shimmy Shimmy Ya

http://us.imdb.com/StudioBrief/#2

Sony Pictures and Revolution are hoping that the popular appeal of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez -- "Ben & Jen," as they have become known -- will offset a torrent of negative publicity and disastrous test screenings of their movie Gigli, which opens Friday. Today's (Wednesday) Los Angeles Times observed that the two companies "are now nervously awaiting the film's reviews, fearful critics will do battle to be the meanest." Several "unofficial" reviews have already appeared. FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman this week put the film at the top of his list of all-time bad movies. "Witless, coarse, and vulgar, Gigli is worse than its advance buzz could have indicated," he wrote. "The film -- if you can call it that -- is a total, mindless disaster." Today's New York Post quotes Good Morning America critic Joel Siegel as saying tersely following a screening Monday night, "I was shocked."
-
p.s.-review at imdb.com said:"Makes Ishtar look Like Citizen Kane" lol

I think I'm going to grab a fifth of jack daniels and sneak into a matinee this weekend. Should be GREAT times.

just wait til friday.

all these reviews are the "little critics", who usually kiss ass to big hollywood names. joel siegel said he was embarassed after the screening. just wait.

08-01-03:redemption day

>I think I'm going to grab a fifth of jack daniels and sneak
>into a matinee this weekend. Should be GREAT times.

yeah i'm not paying, but if i can get in free i'll see it. gigli might be on some ed wood level-so bad you hafta see it.

hahaha, i love horrible movies

--
"Lesbians aren't REALLY lesbians, not with Ben Affleck in the room."

--
Rappity Rap: http://www.soulcreator.com/

and tell me how many people walked out or booed after it finished.

good luck.

Keep it coming, Ricky. I can't stand JHo.

____________________________

FUCK DONALD TRUMP

(if the rumors were true to begin with)

I was SO looking forward to watching Ben spit Bogey one liners...."Here's lookin at you kid". Might as well just piss on his grave while you're at it.

:::gaps with horror:::

____________________________

FUCK DONALD TRUMP

Gigli: 1.5/4 stars

http://www.aufmuth.com/jeanne/reviews/Gigli.html

Publicity for this precocious mob comedy/drama has been heavily focused on Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’ onscreen chemistry. Do they or don’t they? Bottom line, it’s irrelevant. “Gigli” is so misguided that sparks between the leads is the least of its worries.

Larry Gigli (Affleck) is a mob small-timer, a dim-watt bozo who kidnaps a powerful federal prosecutor’s mentally-challenged brother (Justin Bartha as Brian) and holds him hostage until the proper pressure can be put to the proper parties. Not willing to risk such a delicate operation with a loose cannon in charge, big boss Louis (Lenny Venito) dispatches gorgeous New Age gangster Ricki (Lopez) to co-chair the situation.

More than a little miffed at the professional slight, Gigli (rhymes with “rea-lly”) does his best to turn a blind eye to Ricki’s keen intellect and bodacious booty. With little success. As Gigli and Ricki impatiently wait out their job instructions (and cope with the baffling shenanigans of their idiot savant roomie), something akin to a friendship develops, fraught with the ups and downs of sexual tension (his).

Perhaps “Gigli” would have clicked if it had a plot. Or the least little bit of focus. Short of a barely-burgeoning romance (that loses its flicker when Ricki announces that she’s gay), nothing of significance transpires. The script is an abomination – full of insulting cracks at homophobia, crass references to mental retardation, and countless allusions to the illustrious nature of the vagina.

File it away under Weird: over-the-top single-scenes from Christopher Walken as a paranoid cop, and Al Pacino as a whacked-out mafia kingpin, whose unhappiness regarding the deteriorating kidnap operation manifests itself into one of his trademark tirades.

Call me crazy, but I’ve always enjoyed Affleck’s and J. Lo’s individual screen presence. Each is capable of comfortably headlining a film, exuding genuine qualities that almost transcend the material. Affleck’s macho posturing is tinged with vulnerability, and J. Lo’s fresh looks and authentic emotion are easily accessible. But “Gigli” smacks of nothing more than a poorly executed vanity project – albeit one that united Hollywood’s most infamous A-list couple.

Critics can't help trashing the new Jen-and-Ben vehicle, but it deserves credit for its refreshingly frank sexuality

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2003/07/30/gigli/index.html

As is often the case with movies that have poisonous advance word of mouth, "Gigli" turns out to be merely bad -- not a train wreck, not the crime against humanity it's been rumored to be. That, and the fact that it's fashionable to hate Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez right now, will probably do nothing to discourage the predictable pig pile of critics trying to outdo each other by seeing who can be the most dismissive or scathing. After all, nobody wants to look like the class nerd.

More often than not, buzz is something created by the studio, and there are too many -- you should pardon the expression -- entertainment journalists and critics who report that buzz as if it's fact. Needless to say, critics who believe anything a studio tells them in advance are damn fools. I don't know how many times I've heard critics say, "It must be bad, the studio isn't screening it" as if marketability were a mark of quality.

I suspect that what's made Columbia nervous about the movie isn't that it's bad -- studios release far worse movies with no compunction -- but that it isn't a formula picture. There are no car chases or explosions, no boffo jokes that can become catchphrases before the movie opens, and only one gunshot. The ads, showing Affleck and J.Lo in a clinch, don't hint that she plays a lesbian. "Gigli" is a character-driven piece, pitched awkwardly between comedy and drama.

Affleck is Gigli, a mob enforcer who's far too tenderhearted to bring his assignments the level of brutality desired by his boss (played by Lenny Venito -- to say he gives a one-note performance would be generous). A federal prosecutor is threatening to make trouble, so Gigli's boss tells him to kidnap the prosecutor's teenage autistic brother Brian (Justin Bartha) for leverage. Gigli's boss doesn't trust him not to screw up, so he sends another contractor named Ricki (Lopez) to keep an eye on things. She flummoxes Gigli. Not only does she show more patience and kindness toward Brian's quirks, but her quiet way of dealing with things makes hash of Gigli's macho bluster.

The lead performances work the same way. Affleck bellows his way through dem, dese, and dose-isms and Lopez, who underplays nicely, consistently shows him up with her quiet, confident line readings. She's charming here, and I loved watching her. The tension between Gigli and Ricki comes from the fact that he can't believe this gorgeous woman is immune to his swaggering. It's fun to watch Lopez disarm Affleck. Her best scene comes when, while doing yoga, she explains to him that it's the vagina and not the penis that's the real power in the world. One thing the writer-director Martin Brest can take pride in is that "Gigli" has a sexual openness uncommon in Hollywood movies. There's no shame, no big shock moment when, during that speech, Lopez refers to "my pussy." And when they do go to bed, it's not presented as if Ricki is "cured" of her lesbianism. Sex is sex, the movie is saying, and the reality of sex is that sometimes we find ourselves falling into bed with the least likely partner. And besides, she seduces him.

There's a startling moment at the beginning of that seduction when Ricki asks Gigli if he thinks his nails need clipping. The movie turns it into a bit about discerning a man's masculinity from how he looks at his nails. But we all know what it means when a woman asks a man she's about to go to bed with if his nails need clipping. It's the sort of small, recognizable sexual detail the movies routinely shy away from. (And while the movie's treatment of the autistic Brian is often icky, it doesn't pretend that he doesn't have sexual feelings either. At times Bartha's performance is too much Rainman Jr. At other times, he's unpredictably funny.)

The problem with "Gigli" -- and it isn't a small one -- is that Brest never finds an appropriate tone or pace. He appears to be trying for something like a European sense of melancholy here and instead the movie just feels confused (the black comic moments are jarring, though I did laugh at a shot of a fish happily chowing down on a bit of brain matter that's found its way into his tank). Christopher Walken shows up for a few minutes of patented weirdness, and so does Al Pacino, whose five-minute performance may be the worst acting he's ever done. Predictably, the movie falls into sap, and it takes forever for Brest to bring things to a conclusion. He gets a few good comic moments. Brian likes to be read to at bedtime and Gigli, without a book in his house, is reduced to reading the labels of Tabasco sauce and toilet paper to soothe the kid. And there's a funny moment when a gruesome sound inspires Brian to use it as a backbeat to rap Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back."

Considering what Hollywood has put out this summer without any shame, the likes of "Hulk" and "Bad Boys II," "Gigli" is a minor failure, nothing to celebrate but nothing to be ashamed of. Unless a movie that tries -- however badly -- to concentrate on character instead of spectacle has come to be considered a crime.

Gigli: 0/5

http://www.killermoviereviews.com/main.php?nextlink=display&dId=307&subLinks=

If GIGLI were any worse than it is, it would require special HAZMET handling. It transcends merely bad, merely tedious, merely irksome and plummets into that very special category of film, the one that so tries and tortures its audience that, emerging again from the soul-sucking black hole of celluloid disaster, it no longer fears death.

When something is this ill-conceived, it can be hard to know where to start when reviewing it. Bad writing, bad direction, bad acting, they all come into play, but fortunately, GIGLI's star is Ben Affleck, and that makes things fairly easy. Not that the writing and directing courtesy of Martin "Hoo Haa" Brest wouldn't have sunk this flick all on its own, but having Ben at the helm, well, that just gets us there so very much faster. Ben is the Gigli of the title, a low-rent strong-arm guy who seems to get his tips on enforcing from Letterman's Stupid Human Tricks. His latest job is to kidnap a mentally handicapped kid and keep him on ice for a few days. To make sure he doesn't screw up, his boss sends insurance in the form of Jennifer Lopez. And, honestly, that's all you really need to know or that I need to relive. Suffice to say that the story is as flat, barren, and airless as the dark side of the moon. A wanna-be tantalizing interplay between Ben and J. Lo on the primary and secondary sexual characteristics of the genders is a public service message for abstinence, even with J. Lo writhing through a yoga routine in skimpy active wear during the chat. When Gigli needs to keep the kid he's kidnapped sequestered, he takes him out in a convertible and then picks a fight at a taco stand.

Sigh.

Gigli is supposed to be a dim bulb at best and no one captures dim better than Ben. When he's up on screen, furrowing his brow in yet another doomed attempt to emote, one vainly attempts to find some light behind the oddly and persistently vacant eyes, some spark, a flicker, a glimmer, even, of a nascent sentience attempting to make contact with the outside world. Alas, it is a fruitless search and one is once again back on the dark side of the moon. The man is outacted by his hair, though to be fair, it is a fabulous pompadour, aggressive in a millennial way and sculpted with the care and craftsmanship usually reserved for Rococo excrescences. J. Lo flicks her hair, bobs her head, and generally doesn't do anything that will muss her makeup.

Christopher Walken has an extended cameo for no real reason except to provide a side-by-side comparison of the difference between air-brushed vacuousity and quirky charisma. When he left, it was actually painful to know that I couldn't go with him instead of having to stay with Ben and J. Lo. Not even Al Pacino popping up to chew some scenery helped, not after that close up of Laine Kazan's hot pink thong.

After GIGLI, Costner can walk a little taller despite WATERWORLD, Madonna, despite SWEPT AWAY, and everyone involved despite their association with SHOWGIRLS.

READ MY SIG Before Responding ____________________________________________________________
Weekly Words of wisdom from Buckshot of Blackmoon (edited by ME in light of recent events):

From "Buck em down"

"You Know what they say about niggas who ride dicks upstate niggas become chics. Word-life I aint bullshitin, ask my nigga KOBE(edit), on the COURT (edit) he was tough, locked up he was sweet stuff"

************************************************************

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Note: My Avatar Does not reperesent love for the Lakers in any way shape or form, but hate of Kobe and hope that he goes to prison and gets raped By a big dude named Tyrone Dominguez.©


"Get off my DICK" List August

Kobe's Wife (Stop callin me bitch, I tole u not to marry him)

more to come............

SINCERELY,THENAPPYNIGERIANIGGA

Read My Sig Before Responding ____________________________________________________________
Words of wisdom from Blackmoon(edited in light of recent events):

From "Buck em down"

"You Know what they say about niggas who ride dicks upstate niggas beco

Gigli

http://www.theonionavclub.com/review.php?review_id=6666

There aren't many reasons to see the talky, spark-free gangland romantic comedy Gigli, but intrepid moviegoers should at least try to slip in and catch one scene before shuffling off to Seabiscuit or Terminator 3. That scene comes shortly after loudmouthed enforcer Ben Affleck spends his first night with Justin Bartha (the kidnapped, developmentally disabled brother of a federal judge Affleck's bosses want to influence) and Jennifer Lopez (a lesbian fellow contractor assigned to make sure Affleck does the job right). Playing a police detective, Christopher Walken shows up for some unannounced intimidation. In a few short minutes, his scene spotlights the range of his talent, as he veers from scary to funny to bizarre, then back again. Unfortunately, he feels like an old pro condescending to stop by for amateur night. Sure, writer-director Martin Brest lends the film a professional sheen, and his stars (who some rumors suggest may have become romantically involved) have charisma to spare, but the film has all the charge and momentum of a Paxil ad. In what passes for chemistry, Lopez smirks while Affleck yells in a voice borrowed from early John Travolta roles. He delivers a monologue about how every relationship has a bull and a cow. She counters his bluster with quotes from Sun Tzu, though the film lets her killing skills, like her sexuality, remain mostly a matter of hearsay. Apart from the painful anticipation of waiting for Bartha—a newcomer who seems to have seen Rain Man once or twice—to demand a trip to see "the Baywatch" or bust into another impromptu rap, the tension comes from Affleck's inability to score with Lopez, whose professed sexual preference lasts longer against Affleck's charms than Joey Lauren Adams' does in Chasing Amy, but not by much. To be fair, Brest seems to have set out to make a film exploring such sexual vagaries, a theme his characters discuss repeatedly and at great length. But it would be a lot easier to appreciate what the film works toward if it ever came close to getting there. Instead, the dialogue sounds as unconvincing as the action it sets up, a fatal flaw for a film that's essentially all talk. Neither a loud, bloody cameo from Al Pacino nor the obviously tacked-on ending come close to redeeming the tedium, and the unfulfilled promise of a second scene from Walken doesn't help.

intentional?

Oh, and I'm pretty sure Affleck's character was going to die, but they changed it after screenings. Should be a good DVD easter egg. search for trivia on it at imdb.com

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From "Buck em down"

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Gigli

http://www.laweekly.com/film/film_results.php?showid=2483

How fortunate that the J. Lo bod, majestic butt and all, finds itself in excellent working order in Gigli: There is precious little other consolation in this formless windbag of a romantic comedy with bits of gangster flick stuck to the edges. Lopez gives her radiant all as an enforcer sent to supervise an incompetent low-level hood (Ben Affleck, mugging, huffing and rolling his eyes) after he kidnaps the mentally handicapped brother (promising unknown Justin Bartha) of a federal prosecutor about to indict a mob boss (Al Pacino, declaiming in a tiny ponytail). This is one of those rare Hollywood movies in which one longs for more plot. As those who suffered through Scent of a Woman know, all writer-director Martin Brest wants is to have his self-consciously quirky protagonists represent his quirky views on everything from love and life, to the finer points of Chinese military theory, to the resemblance between a woman’s lips and her sexual organs. Occasionally the fog lifts to reveal the ineffably funny Christopher Walken and Lainie Kazan in regrettably brief walk-ons. For the rest, Lopez and Affleck try not to smile at each other while gassing on and on until you’re praying, dear God, please make them shut up and do it so we can all go home in peace.

Gigli: 1/4 Stars

http://www.criticdoctor.com/petersobczynski/gigli.html

Let us suppose that you are looking for a movie to see this weekend (and frankly, it isn’t like you have a choice: it is your duty as an American to be constantly entertained at all times). If you were to pick the kind of film that you would least want to spend two hours of your life watching, which of the following would be tops on you "Must Miss!" list?

A. A film in which a straight guy falls for a lesbian and spends an inordinate amount of time trying (successfully, of course) to convert her to the straight and narrow.

B. A film in which a tough, hard-hearted type finds his cynical nature softening after spending an inordinate amount of time with a mentally handicapped (but only in wacky, life-affirming ways) person.

C. A zany comedy about mobsters in which the lead character talks in the "deese" and "dose" patois generally favored by productions of "Guys and Dolls" staged by lesser high schools.

D. A star vehicle for a couple of media personalities whose joint overexposure has already hit critical mass.

E. A film which features a close-up of Lainie Kazan receiving an insulin shot in her thong-covered hinder.

Well, you indecisive types can rest easy because "Gigli" manages to include all of those elements, and others even more horrifying to consider, in one astoundingly bad package that almost (but not quite) has to be seen to be believed. Although this film has received some of the worst advanced buzz (with rumors of delays, reshoots and even an alleged fistfight between director Martin Brest and one of the producers following a bad test screening) since the Madonna bomb "Swept Away", it somehow manages to exceed those low expectations. And like "Swept Away", this film is likely to be the next big Hollywood punchline: whenever the subject of the idiocy of contemporary American film crops up, "Gigli" is likely to be the gold standard of junk by which all bad films for the next decade or so will be measured.

Although the ads, I notice, are careful not to mention it, I was aware going in to the film that the plot partially revolved around a mob enforcer kidnapping a mentally retarded guy and when I first heard the muffled squawks emerging from Ben Affleck’s mouth in the very first scene, I just assumed that he scored the role of the Rainman-wanna-be. Turns out that he actually plays the enforcer, a none-too-bright dope with the name of Gigli (which rhymes with "really" and whose mispronunciation is the basis for one of the more irritating running jokes) and what sounds like someone trying to impress a date with a really bad impression of Jack Nicholson in "Prizzi’s Honor" is actually his idea of what a gangster talks like. One day, he is ordered by his boss, Louis (Lenny Venito) to remove the mentally challenged Brian (Justin Bartha) from the hospital where he resides and hang on to him until further notice.

After doing so (with laughable ease), Gigli brings Brian (one of those movie retards who always speaks gibberish until the film requires him to be poetic and who has all sorts of "adorable" quirks-including a fascination with "Baywatch", bad 90’s rap and Australian accents) back to his apartment, where they begin to get on each others nerves: Brian needs someone to read to him before he can sleep and Gigli, who has no reading material at all, is forced to recite the label of a bottle of hot sauce (oddly enough, this is the most striking writing that the script has to offer.) Soon, Gigli has another visitor in Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), who is another enforcer that Louis has hired to make sure that Gigli doesn’t screw up. Eventually, they discover that Brian is the brother of a district attorney about to bring charges against a top mob boss: the theory is that if the gangsters hold the brother hostage, the D.A. will drop the case.

This is an extraordinarily stupid premise for a plot (in fact, there is even a scene late in the film where a character-played in a cameo by a scenery-chewing Al Pacino- explains just how fundamentally dumb it actually is) but compared to what is to follow, it comes off as the smart part of the film. It turns out that Ricki is a lesbian (or at least claims to be in order to ward off the astoundingly unappealing Gigli) and the film bogs down into endless discussions between the two about male-female relationships. One in particular-in which Ricki delivers a long, unfunny speech about the joys of girl-girl love-is so grotesquely written and badly played that the literal vagina monologue is the second dumbest and most embarrassing scene I have ever seen Jennifer Lopez (who, you will remember, once shared the screen with a regurgitated Jon Voight and a giant fake snake in "Anaconda") take part in. Unfortunately for us all, it is surpassed a few minutes later during the big love scene in which she finally succumbs to the charms of Gigli (making it the second on-screen conversion for Affleck, after the infinitely better "Chasing Amy")-a scene which will go down in screen history for both the jaw-dropping dialogue (watch "Gobble, gobble" become the camp line of the decade) and the astounding lack of sexual heat displayed between the two. They are as sizzling as a Slurpee and you could grab two people at random on a bus and they would almost certainly display more charisma than Affleck and Lopez demonstrate.

"Gigli" was written and directed by Martin Brest (the same guy who once did the wonderful "Midnight Run") and the best thing that can be said about his work here is that, compared to the bladder-busting running times of recent efforts like "Scent of a Woman" (157 min) and "Meet Joe Black" (178 min), it comes in at a relatively short 124 minutes. However, he still manages to cram in any number of scenes that are patently unnecessary. There is the obsession that the retarded guy has with "Baywatch" (complete with unconvincing payoff). There is the pointless detour where Gigli brings everyone over to visit his mother (the aforementioned Lainie Kazan appearance). Most grotesquely, there is a long sequence in which a former girlfriend of Ricki’s (Missi Crider) storms into Gigli’s apartment, instigates a big screaming fight and then, for no apparent reason, makes a bloody suicide attempt. Not only does this ugly scene stop the movie cold(er), it is never referred to again, making its inclusion especially hateful. Wasn’t there anyone during the long production of this film brave enough to go up to Brest and say "Gee, do you really need the bit where the auxiliary character slashes her wrists and then disappears?"

There is, I must admit, one genuinely great scene in "Gigli" (it occurs about thirty minutes in, if you want to slip into the multiplex at the appropriate time) and it is due entirely to the presence of Christopher Walken, making one of his increasingly ubiquitous appearances in an otherwise unworthy film (perhaps he didn’t want "Kangaroo Jack" to go down as the worst film in appeared in during 2003). As a wily cop on the trail of Brian, it is clear that he has been directed to simply do the best Christopher Walken impersonation possible and he obliges with a turn that is freakily entertaining even by his standards. During his eight-minute aria, he minces, he glowers, he goes off on strange tangents (he has a line about Marie Calendar that is almost worth the price of admission) and, most importantly, he shows Affleck and Lopez (who are all but struck mute for the duration) what real screen charisma and star power is: he is so compelling that when he finally leaves, you wish that Brest would follow him around and leave the other dopes behind. I am giving "Gigli" one star and that is only because of Walken: if Brest were smart, when the film hits DVD, he should only release that scene and stick the rest in the deleted scenes section.

Gigli: 1/10

http://www.sick-boy.com/gigli.htm

I ordinarily don't like to go after an easy target. It used to be a blast to mock the French, but then everyone started doing it after that country didn't back efforts to root out nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (how could they, les bastards!). I tried applying the same logic to Gigli, at least before I saw it. Since the buzz was unbelievably bad, and the few critics who screened the film before me had such a great time bashing it with all of their might, I thought it might be fun to approach the film in a positive manner. "Even if it's bad," I reasoned, "it might be so bad it's good."

So much for my optimism. Gigli is a gargantuan piece of shit and deserves a place in the Bad Movie Hall of Shame. Put it higher than Showgirls (because that had the balls to push the nudity envelope) and the unholy trinity of Glitter, Battlefield Earth and Gods and Generals (because those were vanity projects forced through the system). Gigli, which was originally slated for release last November, is the biggest waste of talent since Full Frontal. Or maybe even Ishtar.

It's no surprise Gigli's writer-director (Meet Joe Black's Martin Brest) and producer (Joe Roth) brawled at a less-than-positive test screening earlier this year. This picture is so awful, even I fought the urge to punch someone once it finally ended (which was about 40 minutes after it should have ended). It's a movie about contract killers with precious little violence. It's a nightmarish blend of Rain Man and Chasing Amy. It's full of long-winded speeches that say absolutely nothing, which makes Gigli a little like The Matrix Reloaded.

Ben Affleck (Daredevil) plays Larry Gigli (rhymes with "really"), a doofus heavy for a SoCal mobster named Louis (Lenny Venito, Men in Black 2). Larry's latest assignment is to kidnap the retarded brother of a federal prosecutor. He manages to do so with shockingly little effort, but once he accompanies Brian (newcomer Justin Bartha) back to his apartment, Larry learns Louis has sent a second fixer to make sure nothing gets screwed up.

That's the meet-cute (or meet-dumb, in this case) for Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (Maid in Manhattan), who plays lesbian hitperson Ricki. He's all tough and impulsive and old school, looking like he just teleported here from the '50s. She's cool, calm and collected, and practices all manner of crazy new age crap. Can you already feel the sexual tension? If you can, you certainly won't be able to once you actually watch Gigli. There is zero chemistry between the real-life lovers, at least from an adult point of view. Kids might be the only ones stupid enough to buy into this mess, but thanks to what must be one of the all-time worst marketing blunders, Gigli is rated R, mostly for its crude language and sex talk. If they purposely went after an R-rating, why not add some skin and a lot more violence?

Everyone is raving about Gigli's brief cameos from real actors (Christopher Walken, Lainie Kazan and Al Pacino, who won an Oscar for Brest's Scent of a Woman), but I think they just seem great compared to the rest of the bullshit on the screen. Kind of a pleasant distraction, like when your doctor busts out with "Baby Got Back" during your colonoscopy. Using the same logic, Lopez seems like a downright capable actress when paired with the hapless Affleck, and that's a statement that literally pains me to type.

Flak Affects Affleck (And Jen)

http://us.imdb.com/StudioBrief/

Several publications and Internet fan sites were carrying reports Wednesday that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are so upset over the terrible buzz that their upcoming movie Gigli has received that they have vowed never to work together again. They reportedly have told friends that they believe the backlash resulted from the gossip about them appearing in the tabloids and elsewhere. Meanwhile, several newspapers today (Thursday) are running reviews of the movie that moved over the Associated Press and Reuters news wires on Wednesday. Both wire services mercilessly panned the film, described by some as a gory romantic comedy/thriller. In New York, the satirical newspaper The Onion said that focus groups at advance screenings of the movie "have demanded a new ending in which both stars die in as brutal a manner as possible." In keeping with the content of the film, the spoof piece continued, focus group members said that the characters should be shot through the head "both at once with a single shot from an elephant gun" or "several hundred times, with multiple camera angles showing their bodies jerking as they're shredded with a heavy hosing of lead, spraying the lens with gobbets of meat and bone and blood, with the sheer number of fist-sized exit wounds obviously precluding any sequel."

No such thing as bad publicity? Consider 'Gigli'

http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-horn30jul30,0,4578052.story?coll=cl-movies-features

The paparazzi gantlet for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez at Sunday's "Gigli" premiere was as hungry as it was long. But when the film's stars climbed out of their Rolls-Royce Phantom, Affleck and Lopez first ignored the many cameras, walking across the street to greet scores of frenzied fans and sign dozens of autographs. It was a rare — and fleeting — moment of adoration for a movie that has suffered some of the most negative attention since Madonna's disastrous "Swept Away."

Opening Friday, "Gigli" provides a textbook tale of how circumstances beyond a studio's and a filmmaker's control can undermine a movie at every turn. Revolution Studios and Sony Pictures, which respectively made and are releasing "Gigli," are now nervously awaiting the film's reviews, fearful critics will do battle to be the meanest. If the film's history can be trusted, their fears are understandable: Plenty of movies struggle and often fail, but few do so publicly and with so much gang tackling.

From "Gigli's" first test screenings, where writer-director Martin Brest clashed with Revolution studio chief Joe Roth over the film's final act and pace, to the film's poster, which allegedly featured a retouched version of Lopez's famous derrière (which the studio denies), nearly every step of the film's path to the screen has been chronicled by the Internet, the tabloids and, eventually, the mainstream media.

Taken together, "Gigli" has single-handedly disproved the maxim that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

A number of people involved in "Gigli's" production talked about marketing the film on condition they not be identified by name. They told a story of swimming constantly against a tide of bad press and an off-screen romance that ultimately proved to be the film's greatest marketing liability.

Despite the bad early buzz, Affleck and Lopez both went to bat for the film, playing off their celebrity sizzle. "They were out there," Revolution partner Tom Sherak says of the two actors. "They cared. They were involved. They were both busy making other movies, and they still did everything and anything we asked them to do."

Neither a romantic comedy nor a standard drama, the $54-million film stars Affleck as a Los Angeles thug named Larry Gigli (it rhymes with "really"), ordered by his gangster boss to kidnap the disabled son of a federal prosecutor. Soon after Gigli abducts the young man, a second mobster named Ricki (Lopez) arrives at Gigli's apartment to make sure everything's under control. Gigli quickly falls for Ricki, who lets him know she's gay. But will they still fall in love?

If their movie romance is in doubt, their off-screen romance certainly isn't. And the real-life love affair presented several challenges, according to people who worked on "Gigli." The biggest problem is that moviegoers may not want to spend $9 to watch a romance they can catch at any hour of any day on TV for free. Furthermore, their real-life love affair compromises any mystery that surrounds the film's make-believe plot: If you already know they are going to end up together, where's the suspense in the theater?

Sony and Revolution tried a number of advertising strategies to persuade people there is an actual movie. (Because the movie's title is easily mispronounced, the film was briefly called "Tough Love," but Affleck, among others, preferred the original tongue-twisting title.) In an attempt to overcompensate for the tabloids, new ads focus heavily on the movie's plot and less on its stars. But the new TV spot was eclipsed by more gossip about the couple — this time their impending marriage. At the same time, the studios were never able to establish the film as the work of a respected filmmaker (the Oscar-nominated Brest also made "Midnight Run" and "Scent of a Woman"). It was always about Affleck and Lopez — though ironically, Lopez only stepped into the role after Halle Berry dropped out of the project.

Internet attention

It's hard to find stars higher up the celebrity food chain than Affleck and Lopez — just glance at any newsstand. So early research screenings of the film drew instant Internet attention, especially on www.aintitcoolnews.com. One Web reviewer said, "Never have I seen such a disasterous film as this." Another said the film "is so bad, so god awful, and so painful to sit through that I seriously think it's flat out unreleasable."

Sony and Revolution believe the online reviews of the incomplete film were unnecessarily personally and professionally vindictive, but whatever their motivation the Internet notices were quickly repeated in the mainstream media, a toxic development from which the studio struggled but was never able to recover fully.

The bad press spun out globally. In the last week, for instance, articles disparaging "Gigli" have been published everywhere from India's Hindustan Times to Scotland's Glasgow Evening Times. Many of these stories have included mentions from some of the Internet reviews.

Ken Sunshine, Affleck's publicist, says reporters have dwelled so much on the couple's romance that "they aren't giving the movie a chance."

The romance generates other, unexpected issues, according to some people who worked on the film. Thanks to his early work in titles such as "Good Will Hunting" and "Chasing Amy" (in which he also falls in love with a lesbian), Affleck enjoys a noteworthy following among independent film fans. But his romance with Lopez, a pop-culture powerhouse with meager art house appeal, actually hurts Affleck's draw, several executives said. Miramax even has postponed "Jersey Girl," another movie starring Affleck and Lopez from filmmaker Kevin Smith, from November to early next year in order to distance itself from "Gigli."

Affleck's art house fans aren't the only moviegoers left out in the cold. Lopez's core audience is composed of young girls. But they won't be able to see "Gigli" without a parent or guardian, because the film's language and violence earned it an R rating.

Debate on screenings

One of the more spirited debates preceding "Gigli's" release focused on early screenings. Unlike premieres and media screenings that are typically held a week or so before a film opens, these early word-of-mouth showings can start a month or more before the debut weekend. Sometimes, they are publicly advertised as "sneak previews." The idea for both the sneak preview and recruited screenings is to heighten audience interest in movies that are both flying under the radar and are actually pretty good. The problem with "Gigli" was that the film certainly wasn't flying under the radar, and several people who worked on the film admitted it wasn't all that great.

Some people involved in the debate felt that since some moviegoers assumed "Gigli" was no better than "Ishtar," early screenings would prove that the film was hardly that kind of epic disaster. These people believed that without showing "Gigli," its bad buzz would continue to mushroom, until it totally overran the film itself. They also felt that advertisements would never be able to convey the film's idiosyncratic plot, but that early screenings would.

But others believed any further "Gigli" exposure would only fan the flames of mounting audience disapproval. Ultimately, Sony and Revolution decided not to hold any recruited or sneak preview screenings.

Sony and Revolution have been working diligently to squeeze at least one good weekend of ticket sales from the film. Two weekends ago, the two stars sat down for about 60 junket interviews with TV reporters, and they spent nearly an hour talking to fans and the media at the film's premiere. The pair also were interviewed by Pat O'Brien as part of a package that ran on the "Today" show, "Dateline NBC" "VH1" and "Access Hollywood."

The O'Brien interview, which made the couple appear like regular folk, appears to have helped the film. Audience surveys show that while many people are aware of "Gigli," the film is the first moviegoing choice for very few. But after the widely watched O'Brien interview was broadcast, the number of people, particularly women, interested in seeing the film went up significantly.

The film also will be shown tonight and Thursday night as part of radio station promotions in 75 cities. Those screenings come so close to the film's theatrical debut on Friday they won't affect word-of-mouth, but instead will deliver radio mentions of the film across the country, which Sony estimates can be worth millions in advertising.

It's a small help, but at this point, "Gigli" needs all the help it can get.

>No such thing as bad publicity? Consider 'Gigli'

im not sure. all these bad reviews you posted have actually gotten me to consider watching this movie. for real, this could really be the most embarrasing moment in film history. i would be a fool not to experience this piece of shit.

the way i see it, i think im gonna go stoned to the movie theater. it could go one of two ways:

1)so bad it kills my high

2)so bad that the unintentional comedy will have me buggin out seriously.

if it really is so bad that it kills my high, ill just sneak into another movie.

__________________________

1 Star

Real-life couple gives lousy performances in pandering kidnapping romance 'Gigli'

http://splicedwire.com/03reviews/gigli.html

In what may go down as most embarrassing, imprudent attempt at cleverly sexy dialogue the history of cinema, the gangland romantic comedy catastrophe entitled "Gigli" features Jennifer Lopez coming on to Ben Affleck by asking to be orally pleasured with the line, "Come on, gobble, gobble."

But it's not the line all by itself that makes this moment the cherry atop this dung-heap sundae of a movie that is nothing but bad moments. It's also the fact that Lopez is playing a lesbian -- one of those gorgeous, male-fantasy movie lesbians who just needed the right man to straighten her out.

And it's also the idea that this "right man" for a straight-curious, street-smart sappho could be an angry, dimwitted mook and inept mob-enforcer, played by Affleck with a New Jersey accent (even though the character grew up in southern California) and the stink of churlish masculinity that comes from over-active testosterone glands and beer-deadened brain cells.

Perhaps the wholly artificial Affleck was cast based on the fact that in 1996's "Chasing Amy" he'd successfully romanced another lesbian -- but at least the girl in that movie was conflicted about changing teams. Lopez's character just flops on her back, seduced by the 15-watt personality power of Affleck's grossly affected swagger.

Written and directed by Martin Brest, whose last outing was the equally unbearable "Meet Joe Black," the romance revolves around these two opposing personalities being assigned to keep an eye on each other as they kidnap the mentally disabled brother of a district attorney and threaten harm to the kid (Justin Bartha, whose performance is straight out of a community theater rendition of "Rain Man") if charges aren't dropped against their boss's capo.

Not the least bit believable as underworld thugs to begin with (when Lopez threatens to gouge somebody's eyes out, it's more cute than intimidating), the pair are soon charmed as much by their autistic charge as they are by each other. When orders come down to cut off his thumb and mail it to the uncooperative DA, Gigli (Affleck) and Ricki (Lopez) go soft. They substitute a cadaver's digit (apparently they're unfamiliar with the concept of fingerprints), and land themselves in hot water with the mobster and a quirky local cop (played by Al Pacino and Christopher Walken respectively, in enjoyably idiosyncratic one-scene performances that show the movie's stars for the lightweights they really are).

So dumb that he gets into arguments with his mentally challenged victim over perceived insults stemming from Tourette's Syndrome, it's no wonder that Gigli was assigned a minder. But while Ricki, with her bouncy hair and skin-tight hip huggers, is supposed to be the smart, cool-headed one on this job (she quotes "The Art of War" and makes amateur psychiatric diagnoses), it never crosses her mind that maybe Gigli's apartment isn't the best place to keep a kidnapee or that maybe taking him out in public for lunch might draw unwanted attention.

How these two clowns each got their alleged criminal reputations is one of the great mysteries of "Gigli." The other is whether the movie could have been redeemed at all by its original ending in which Gigli was killed. The rejection by happy-ending-conditioned test audiences led to re-shoots and a major overhaul in the editing room.

The word on the industry grapevine is that the lesbian angle has been played down as a result, which may account for the gauche seduction scenes ("gobble, gobble" is preceded by a jog-bra and short-shorts-clad Lopez giving a tasteless speech about the joys of the female genitalia while striking sexually suggestive yoga positions) and the sunsets-and-saccharine plot detour in the last reel that is accompanied by an nauseating, overbearing chorus-of-angels musical score.

But even if Brest's best, first cut of "Gigli" didn't include the fence-jumping romance or the not-played-for-laughs ineptitude of the kidnappers -- and even if it avoided every plot hole and platitude -- the flimsy, tedious performances don't reflect any spark of life or any hint of the so-called chemistry that reportedly lead to of Affleck (who comes across as a Travolta-from-Get Shorty" wannabe) and Lopez (who has had more depth in music videos) falling in love on the set.

Since these two have another big screen pairing waiting in the wings (Kevin Smith's "Jersey Girl"), here's hoping that this fiasco is somehow entirely the fault of the director, because at this point I think I'd rather suffer through last week's pandering, soft-pitch Dateline NBC special about the couple than watch them lurch and stagger through another two hours of screen amour.

Gigli:F

Verdict: So bad it verges on the legendary.

http://www.accessatlanta.com/movies/content/shared/movies/gigli.html

"Gigli" makes "Hudson Hawk" look like a hiccup, "Ishtar" like a minor misstep. It’s the stuff "Mystery Science Theater 3000s" are made of.

Before it opened, it was infamous for being the movie that spawned L'Affaire Jennifer Lopez/Ben Affleck. Now that it’s arrived at the multiplex, it can be judged for what it is: a disaster of spectacular proportions.

Larry Gigli (Affleck) is a lunkheaded mob enforcer with an unpronounceable name ("It rhymes with ‘really,’" he keeps saying). His new assignment is to kidnap the younger brother of a federal judge who has the power to put some crooked New York-based mob boss away for life. Next thing you know, we're in a bargain-basement version of "Rain Man." The brother, Brian (Justin Bartha), is a brain-damaged kid, irritating but a sweetheart, and as obsessed with "Baywatch" as Dustin Hoffman was with BlueLight Specials.

Gigli takes Brian to his apartment for safekeeping. That's when Ricki (Lopez) - not her real name - shows up. She's a hot-chick hit woman and has been sent to baby-sit Gigli in case something goes wrong. Which has got to be the flimsiest excuse for a plot turn in recent memory. (But, then, things get flimsier. . . .)

As far back as Aristophanes, romantic comedies have needed obstacles to work. It used to be traditional notions of women's sexuality - no sex before marriage, etc. - were obstacle enough. But in the wake of birth control, women in the workplace, and a shifting social climate, that no longer works. Thus, the obstacles have become increasingly far-fetched - opposite coasts in "Sleepless in Seattle," or a wedding planner falling in love with the groom-to-be in Lopez's "The Wedding Planner." The roadblock in "Gigli" is that Ricki is a happy lesbian and even a sex god like, um, Gigli may not be able to sway her.

Please.

The movie is airless and inane. You feel suffocated by scenes that have no weight. For instance, Gigli and Ricki drop by his mother's (Lainie Kazan) for some spurious non-reason. The real reason, of course, is so director Martin Brest can have a scene in which Mom gives her blessings to lesbianism, yet encourages the idea that lesbians can go both ways when the right fella comes along. (All the while, Kazan eyes J. Lo like a whale courting a piece of plankton.) And whatever chemistry Lopez and Affleck have in real life curdles on-screen. Watching him try to distract her sexually while she's reading a book is embarrassing. Think: Winnie the Pooh coming on to Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Lopez is the only one who gets out of this alive - and even so, she's pretty badly maimed after delivering a sexual-politics monologue while doing some sort of exercise/meditation that must've been culled from the Kama Sutra.

The script, written by Brest of "Scent of a Woman" infamy, gives her zilch, so Lopez falls back on her diva power, in all its tawny sexuality and ferocious me-ness. She gives you something to watch, even if it’s something you'd prefer not to see.

Christopher Walken stumbles through a small scene, trying to charge a superfluous character with some kind of oomph. And just when you think things can't possibly get any worse, Al Pacino shows up in a performance so ripely hammy you half expect him to turn into a pork rind.

Finally, there's Affleck. Matt's Ben. Gwyneth's Ben. Now, J. Lo’s Ben. Ben, who has the blockiest head in movies next to Ted Danson, James Van Der Beek, and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's Monster. The Affleck effect is akin to a black hole, sucking all the energy and life out of every scene he's in. Somewhere along an L.A. expressway, he's lost the dexterity, the self-deprecating sense of humor he had in earlier movies like "Chasing Amy" or even "Changing Lanes."

One recurring metaphor Gigli employs for the battle of the sexes, gay or straight, is that it all comes down to bulls (him) and cows (her). Maybe that explains why "Gigli" is such a pile of manure.

'Gigli' not all it's cracked up to be (EDIT:is that a bad thing?)

Gigli:2.5/5 Stars

http://www.sunnews.com/entertain/movies2003/movies073103.htm

Yes, "Gigli," is the infamous first movie to feature Hollywood's power couple, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. It certainly will be negatively devoured just for that fact.

Does it deserve the backlash? Well, yes, it does, though it's not a complete disaster. There are a few chuckles and these two soon-to-be-marrieds manage to flash a hint of chemistry.

Even with that, "Gigli" is simply a mediocre movie released at the wrong time. Normally, a flick like this would slide in and out of theaters unnoticed, then pop up on cable and home video before settling for its eventual and inevitable fade into obscurity.

Now, it's an event picture, a curiosity — but for all the wrong reasons. Maybe some would find it great if it was a total stinkeroo, watching the overhyped stars take a big fall. On the other hand, it would have been a nice surprise if, despite the odds, the film was surprisingly grand.

It's neither. This is simply J.Lo and that Affleck guy sleepwalking through another mundane romantic comedy, only this time, it's about two cute underworld types.

The twist here is that Ricki (Lopez, sexy as always) is gay and Gigli (Affleck, playing the Vinnie Barbarino type) is a little challenged by that.

You know the drill. Though the pair are in unseemly jobs, they're really sweet kids at heart.

Yes, they've threatened people. Yes, they've kidnapped a mentally challenged teen who's the younger brother of a federal prosecutor. Yes, they have orders to cut off one of his fingers.

But, c'mon, Ricki and Gigli are such an adorable pair that you know they'll do the right thing.

Had they done the wrong thing, this could have been a more intriguing and darker tale. Evil people can fall in love, too . . . but, gosh, this isn't that movie. Ben and Jen are just too cute for nasty roles like that.

J.Lo plays a lesbian;Affleck plays dumb-but they're no less unconvincing than the rest of this mafia flop.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0331/film-gigli.php

IN ONE OF THE MANY interminable, static monologues that accrue oh so slowly, like protracted snowfalls adding up to an ice age, to form the movie Gigli (which opens Friday, Aug. 1, at Meridian and other theaters), improbable gangster Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) tells improbable gangster Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) that penises resemble sea slugs. She's explaining why she's a lesbian, impervious to Gigli's stumblebum, can't-shoot-straight charm. If he were smart, he'd reply, "At least my chin dimple resembles a vagina!" But he's dumb, and so is Affleck's clumsy, actorly attempt to portray a dumb gangster.
I suppose penises do resemble sea slugs, but not as much as this movie does. Weighed down by the couple's off-screen romantic celebrity, a burden as crushing as a mile's worth of seawater, Gigli inches determinedly along to its foregone, and woebegone, lesbian-sellout conclusion. Ricki and Gigli first meet because their boss, Louis (Lenny Venito, who resembles an underbaked Joe Pantoliano), orders Gigli to kidnap a federal prosecutor's improbably retarded brother, Brian (promising newcomer Justin Bartha), to blackmail the prosecutor into dropping charges against their mob über-boss (Al Pacino). Ricki is sent to make sure screwup Gigli doesn't screw up the job.

Most of the movie consists of Ricki and Gigli improbably, flirtatiously squabbling while baby-sitting Brian. Brian's retardation is hokum, but it gives his character some real appeal. His lonely lifelong quest to join the babes of Baywatch in erotic frolic on the beach provides a measure of poignancy, jarring amid Gigli's soulless, inhuman expanse of faux emotion. In this context, Brian is like a less believable, more sentimental, less annoying version of Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man. Maybe this is an in-joke: Gigli director Martin Brest made the excellent 1988 Midnight Run, once associated with Hoffman, whose involvement caused the project to morph into two separate movies, Midnight Run and Barry Levinson's Oscar-winning Rain Man. So now Brest finally gets his own damn Rain Man.

Yet while Rain Man was all about Hoffman's tics and ego, Gigli is about Affleck attempting to melt Lopez's frozen clam with repeated gusts of macho hot air. He extols the sea slug; she extols the jelly roll while doing yoga stretches that are supposed to drive us wild with desire but drive us wild with boredom, and their ultimate hookup is no less dull. I can't recall an action film with less action—erotic, comic, or gangsterish. Given one brief scene each, not even Pacino or Christopher Walken (as a detective) can enliven their stupid, pointless, improbable monologues. Calamitously, director Brest couldn't fire the writer of this Tarantino pastiche, because Brest is also the film's writer.

Gigli's nadir comes when Ricki scares some high-school kids into turning down their boom box by telling them—in yet another long, improbable monologue—about an Asian martial art known as "the rip that takes the past." She claims to know how to rip out people's eyes so fast that all their visual memory is yanked out, too. You'll walk out of Gigli wishing for the rip that takes the past two hours.

I HAVE to see this movie

This isn't plans one thru eight. It's Plan Nine! The worst movie EVER made!

>I HAVE to see this movie

i expect a review then.

>This isn't plans one thru eight. It's Plan Nine! The worst
>movie EVER made!

Yes exactly!

I've downloaded 6 different versions and I keep getting blanks. Funny thing is that this rarely happens. All the films out there being downloaded and THIS is the one they're protecting??

Must have something to do with that "dont download films" commercial with Afleck

I'll keep trying and I'll be back with a review

BTW I commend you on this post ricky. ...really I do

>I've downloaded 6 different versions and I keep getting
>blanks. Funny thing is that this rarely happens. All the
>films out there being downloaded and THIS is the one they're
>protecting??

one word/no clue: HOLLYWOOD

>I'll keep trying and I'll be back with a review

looking forward to it.

>BTW I commend you on this post ricky. ...really I do

thanks. there were thirty new reviews when i checked the computer this morning. i almost threw up the white flag. but gigli will never win . . .

I really did. I downloaded at least 20 different versions and no cigar.

My apologies ricky

Gigli:1/4 Stars

Hitting a new Lo
Ben & Jen are crass & crasser in lame mob comedy

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/moviereviews/story/105317p-95218c.html

"Gigli" is a disaster.

Although Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez fell in love while making this crude black comedy, which opens tomorrow, they play unappetizing characters who deserve each other only because no one else would have them.

The one thing the movie has going for it is, as my dearly departed grandmother might have observed of J.Lo, "That girl's kishkes are hanging out!"

She would have used the Yiddish slang for guts to account for the copious amount of bare flesh that pours from Lopez's low-rider jeans as she portrays a supposedly deadly mob enforcer. (Where does she pack her gun?)

But like the stuffed-intestine delicacy by the same name, "Gigli" clearly has been chopped and re-formed in a vain attempt to appeal to a fan base that craves a Cinderella story.

The impending nuptials of Lopez and Affleck lead the public to expect a romantic comedy with a happily-ever-after ending. However, the script, by writer-director-producer Martin Brest, looks as if it began life as a crime drama with a heart.

It has since morphed into a comedy without a pulse.

Affleck plays Larry Gigli (rhymes, as he often tells people, with "really"), a caricature of a low-level goombah. Under instructions, he has kidnapped a federal judge's younger brother in an attempt to influence the outcome of a mob trial.

Lopez plays a thug-ette named Ricki who helps Larry baby-sit the kidnap victim, a mildly autistic lad who dials up Australian weather reports and who wants to visit "the Baywatch," an idea of heaven on earth he got from the TV show, because "I think that's where the sex is."

In a "Rain Man" sort of way, the boy grows on his two kidnappers, and we know this because the music on the soundtrack inappropriately soars and swells as if willing the audience to melt in tears.

When Larry and Ricki are instructed by a crime boss to cut off the kid's thumb as evidence of how much they are not to be trifled with, the two realize they're not cut out for a gangland career after all. A ridiculous and unamusing sequence ensues as Larry carves a substitute thumb off a stiff at the morgue.

Romantic comedies must offer the main couple an obstacle to overcome, and "Gigli" has one that would appear to be a deal-breaker: Ricki prefers women.

She not only prefers them, she rhapsodizes over their body parts in unflinching detail.

Even if Ricki weren't a lesbian, she is clearly disgusted by all things Larry. She sneers at him and lampoons him for proclaiming things like, "In every relationship, there is a bull and a cow."

In this relationship, there is also a turkey.

When Ricki finally dares Larry to show his stuff in bed, the resulting sequence could charitably be called a mercy mission.

Two cameo appearances in "Gigli" are so odd and gratuitous, we're just going to pretend they never happened.

One involves Christopher Walken, who deconstructs his dialogue into component words and then delivers them in some sort of salute to Kafka.

The other involves Al Pacino, who is under the misconception that he is in a decibel contest.

Thanks to a new ending that was tacked on to increase its shelf life, "Gigli" offers an amazing cure for homosexuality. How could scientists, shrinks and lesbians everywhere have missed this?

The cure is … Ben Affleck!

Something about him makes lesbians want to "hop the fence." What could that be?

It is surely not his acting ability.


Save $10 & your dignity


There are so many bad moments in "Gigli," it's a shame to single out only a few. But so you will be able to talk about the movie without actually having to see it, here are just some the worst offenders:

LAINIE KAZAN'S BUTT: Larry Gigli has to give his loudmouth mother an injection (insulin, maybe?) and grabs her butt cheeks in full, dismaying closeup.

"BABY GOT BACK": The autistic boy Larry has kidnapped likes to learn the lyrics of rap songs, even though he doesn't understand them. Hence, he bursts out with: "I like big butts and I cannot lie!"

GOBBLE GOBBLE: Here's the start of the big sex scene: Confirmed lesbian Ricki lies back on the bed with her legs spread and instructs Larry: "Turkey time! Gobble, gobble!"

DOWN DOG: J.Lo demonstrates her yogic expertise on a sticky mat, where she goes through a lot of demanding, revealing contortions while explaining in clinical detail why her character loves the female body and detests a certain male part, which is "like a slug."

FRIGHTENING NEMO: After a gangster shoots a hole through the head of one of his lackeys, the blood and brain matter spill into a nearby fishtank, where the fishies begin to nibble.

WRIST-SLICING FOR FUN: When Ricki's lesbian lover pitches a fit and slashes her wrists, the scene is edited for comic potential.

Gigli: 1/4 stars

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/movies/mmx-030731movies-review-mc-gigli,0,955679.story

"Gigli" rhymes with "really," we're told twice in the movie of the same name, and it begins with a "zs" sound, as in "Zsa Zsa." It's the last name of Ben Affleck's dese-dem-dose thug character, Larry Gigli. People mispronounce it. He corrects them. Why he has a French-sounding last name is anyone's guess. We never hear doodley about his background. It's just one of those pointless, random details.

Put together enough pointless, random details, and you get "Gigli," a movie that's less incompetent than bewildering. How on earth did writer-director Martin Brest ("Meet Joe Black," "Scent of a Woman") envision this movie? As "Chasing Amy" meets "Rain Man" meets "Pulp Fiction"? Did someone think that sounded like a winning combination?

Mind you, we're not talking about the best parts of those movies -- just the most incongruous. Try this on: "Gigli" is the heartwarming, talky tale of a mob henchman who falls for the curvaceous lesbian hired to keep an eye on him while he guards the mentally challenged young guy he's kidnapped so his boss can extort a federal prosecutor.

When toughie Larry talks to his scruffy boss, Louis (Lenny Venito), or the older man he strong-arms by trapping inside a Laundromat dryer, every other word starts with an "f." Larry's introduction to his watchdog colleague Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) is a similarly foul-mouthed encounter as she reduces him from strutting peacock to roasted fowl.

But soon the would-be couple's conversations resemble rambling therapy sessions prescribed by Dr. Phil. Ricki points out that Larry seems sad. Larry just doesn't get that whole lesbian thing. Larry champions the penis. Ricki compares it to a big toe. And so on.

Then there's Brian (Justin Bartha), one of those mentally challenged young people that movies like to portray as innocent man-children rather than three-dimensional human beings. Bartha apparently has downloaded Dustin Hoffman's "Rain Man" performance; he's got the agitated muttering and blurted non sequiturs down cold. And when he smiles, Brest never fails to thrust the camera right up to his face. At such moments, the orchestral score becomes coated in so much syrup, it could open its own IHOP franchise.

Brian, who never seems to register that he's been kidnapped, keeps insisting that Larry take him to "the Baywatch"-- not the TV show but some actual place, because in Larry's mind, "I think that's where the sex is." Will Brian reach this destination? Will we be treated to the sight of him shaking his groove thang on a beach amid bikini-clad women? I wouldn't dream of spoiling the suspense.

Nor will I tell you what happens when Louis orders Larry and Ricki to chop off Brian's thumb as a signal that the kidnappers mean business. Such a development might trigger actual tension in a movie that traded in authentic emotions rather than blatantly manufactured ones. In "Gigli," which introduces its main characters as hard-bitten criminals and then spends the rest of the time trying to convince you how lovable they are, the device just feels cheap, like the famous National Lampoon "Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog" cover played straight.

Not an unskilled writer, Brest has crafted some scenes that might play well if excised from the whole. In one, Ricki offers a literate, if typically raunchy, explanation of the difference between "sure" and "yes." In another, Christopher Walken provides the movie's first (and just about only) laughs as a police detective who pops into Larry's apartment with the air of someone who can't remember which body part itches. He suspects Larry had something to do with Brian's disappearance but would be content to blame the job on space aliens.

That's the last we see of the detective, which is odd given that anyone at Brian's institution should have been able to describe Larry. But Brest conveniently ignores real-life logic even as he expects us to accept "Gigli" as a serious character study.

You never lose awareness that you're watching something written -- preciously, most of the time -- as opposed to something that actually happened. Nary a note rings true.

Ricki's lesbianism is portrayed as nothing deeper than a preference for blonds over brunets. Larry's just not her type -- at least until the plot requires her to reconsider. The movie also suggests that Larry might by sexually confused, but this possibility is given such superficial treatment, it must be there strictly for laughs -- not that they ever come.

Affleck already grappled with love for a lesbian in "Chasing Amy." The difference here is a significant drop-off in IQ points. Affleck plays Larry Gigli like Edward Burns on stupid pills. Lopez is the more natural star here, thanks to her radiant smile and general ease in front of the camera, even if they rarely connect with a coherent character.

Al Pacino's hammy cameo (an almost redundant phrase by now) is indicative of what's wrong with "Gigli." Pacino's mob honcho is supposed to be menacing, but he's just full of gas -- he should watch Dustin Hoffman in "Confidence" for a far funnier, creepier spin on a similar role. You sense the actor and filmmaker straining to be … what's that annoying word? … edgy. The result is as convincing as Pat Boone covering NWA songs.

"Gigli" is a movie in which fish feast on brains that have been blown into an aquarium (the bullet would've shattered the tank, but never mind), a mentally challenged boy yearns for beach babes, and cutesy thugs argue over who's the bull and who's the cow in their relationship, even though the woman requests a sexual act by saying, "It's turkey time. Gobble, gobble."

She said it.

Review: 'Gigli' is really, really bad
It's better than 'Swept Away,' for what it's worth

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/31/sprj.cas03.review.gigli/index.html

OK, so "Gigli" is not the worst film in years. That dubious title still goes to "Swept Away," or maybe "Freddy Got Fingered." But "Gigli" is still a huge waste of celluloid.

In Hollywood, it's all about "what have you done lately," and despite such successes as "Scent of a Woman," "Midnight Run" and "Beverly Hills Cop," writer/director/producer Martin Brest has done nothing that can make up for this ill-conceived mess.

If miscasting was a crime, this movie would be proof of a felony. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez fit their characters like a glove -- if the glove in question belonged to O.J. Simpson.

Affleck plays a low-level mob enforcer named Larry Gigli (pronounced like "really") assigned to kidnap a mentally challenged young man, Brian (think Raymond in "Rainman"), played amazingly well by Justin Bartha in his feature film debut. Affleck's real-life lady love, Lopez (they met during the filming of this movie), plays Ricki, another mob enforcer hired to keep an eye on Gigli.

Insult upon insult
It seems Brian's brother is a powerful federal prosecutor who is after a mob boss, played by Al Pacino. The plan is for the prosecutor to drop the charges against the gangster in order to get his brother back safe and sound.

Say what? In what universe?

Of course, Ricki and Larry fight like cats and dogs and hate each other from the get-go -- a sure sign that they'll be under the sheets by the second reel. And they are, despite the fact that Ricki is a lesbian.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Ben Affleck, who already did this in "Chasing Amy," is at it again. He's become "Benny the lesbian changer," the new secret weapon for the religious right. In all fairness, the ending was changed at the last minute after massive negative audience reactions in test screenings. This, however, is only the final insult after a film full of them.

There were obviously many changes made during the making of this cinematic train wreck. The story is all over the place: there is one really strange scene with Christopher Walken playing a cop, and then we never see him again. He's on the cutting room floor.

Wishing he were there too is Pacino, who appears in only one embarrassing scene.

Beyond the cringe
But the most award for the most cringe-inducing moment goes to Lopez, for a scene in which she stretches out on the floor in every sexual position known to man while debating the pros and cons of female and male anatomy. I know, it sounds hot on paper, doesn't it?

The bad guy characters become good guys with no motivation, nor any visible cause or effect. None of the scenes seem to be connected to each other in any way; the entire film feels like it was edited on an assembly line, without feeling for rhythm or nuance.

At one point, Ricki's lesbian lover breaks into their "hideout" and tries to commit suicide. After comforting her in the hospital, Ricki runs back and jumps in the sack with the "lesbian changer." This is a comedy?

Brest showed such great promise in the 1980s with hit after hit, as mentioned above. Then, in 1998, he gave us "Meet Joe Black." Now he's given us "Gigli." He should remember that California is a "three strikes and you're out" state for criminal offenders.

gigli .5/4 stars
J-Lo gobbled up in turkey 'Gigli'

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1553/4017735.html

If you thought you could never, ever feel sorry for Jennifer Lopez, buy a ticket to "Gigli."

Imagine starring in a film so excruciating that it won't sink quietly, but rather be relentlessly scrutinized and critiqued and debated and autopsied. Imagine delivering a performance so out of tune with reality that it will inspire public mockery for years to come.

Now imagine that this doomed project requires you to speak these lines of dialogue, in a love scene, no less: "It's turkey time. Gobble, gobble."

In "Gigli," Lopez, her leading man, Ben Affleck, and all concerned have sailed into a perfect storm of cinematic awfulness, a lightweight romantic comedy with a bloody suicide attempt, a brain-spattered fish tank and a thumb sawed off with a plastic spoon. It's a Rob Reiner movie for psychopaths.

Affleck plays Larry Gigli, a lower-echelon mobster in Los Angeles. Larry is presented as a lovable eccentric and a soft touch. His idea of strong-arming a debtor is threatening him with a long ride in a commercial clothes dryer. If the chumps can't come up with all the money they owe, Larry allows them to live and finish the payoff another day.

His indignant superior, Louis (hawk-eyed Lenny Venito), considers him a bumbler. In the first of many mind-warping implausibilities, he assigns Larry to handle a crucial kidnapping.

The target is Brian (Justin Bartha), the brain-damaged teenage brother of a federal prosecutor. Brian has the sort of jokey movieland retardation that can be easily handled with a bit of good humor, patience and an occasional raised voice. The boy quickly becomes a comically troublesome surrogate child for Larry.

To make sure that Larry doesn't louse up his mission, Louis assigns a second, tougher enforcer to keep an eye on him. He dispatches Ricki (Lopez) to move into his one-bedroom apartment. Like most mob thugs, she wears belly shirts and skintight hip-huggers that would make a stripper blush.

She explains that Larry's not her type -- she prefers girls -- but the point is raised as a kooky romantic-comedy hurdle that can be quickly cleared with a little sharing and cajoling. One of Ricki's former lovers bursts onto the scene and slits her wrists in an attempt to win her back, a jarring sequence that throws the film's uneven emotional architecture further out of whack.

Of course, two major stars, male and female, must follow the laws of film and fall in love despite all obstacles. Affleck has converted lesbians before, working his irresistible magic on Joey Lauren Adams in 1997's "Chasing Amy."

Soon Larry, Ricki and Brian settle into a mock-nuclear family. Larry tutors the shy, stuttering Brian, who has blossomed under his influence, on how to pick up chicks. It all ends with a bikini-beach-party dance sequence.

Ick, ick and ick, people. Soft-brained and inhumanly dull, "Gigli" has no pace, no drive, none of the dark animal vitality that might have made this tasteless material a guilty pleasure.

Only in two brief scenes does it flicker to life. Early on, Christopher Walken does his funny-creepy thing as a sarcastic cop. At this point, it dawns on the viewer that there are still 100 minutes to go. Later, Al Pacino dusts off his spittle-flecked rage shtick as an apoplectic Mafioso, and the film again rises from dormancy -- momentarily.

Lopez and Affleck are all the dimmer when they share the screen with real stars. Walken sums it up when he regards Affleck with a pie-eyed gaze and says, "You don't know nuthin'. I can tell by lookin' at ya."

You said it, Chris.

What works: The theater exit.

What doesn't: Don't get me started.

Great line: Yeah, right.

Gigli: 1.5/5 stars
'Gigli': Warm, fuzzy thugs fall flat

http://ae.charlotte.com/entertainment/ui/charlotte/movie.html?id=107733&reviewId=12746

Half an hour into "Gigli," writer-director Martin Brest cruelly raises our hopes. Christopher Walken slinks onscreen, darting his iguana eyes around Ben Affleck's apartment and chattering quietly and darkly about alien abductions. After five minutes, he vanishes. We wait vainly for the next 90 minutes for someone, anyone to bring that kind of danger, unpredictability and vitality to a story as drab as army fatigues.

Martin Brest crafted "Gigli" as a vehicle for Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, who play minor thugs Larry and Ricki with surprising lack of connection for real-life lovebirds. Brest tries to get sparks to fly between them, but it's like rubbing together pieces of plastic to make a fire. That's not all their fault, since his dialogue is a soup of cliches, profanities and sex talk most of us heard in high school.

Larry, the Gigli of the title - which rhymes with "really," as he tells people over and over - is a low-level debt collector in Los Angeles. His boss, Louie (Lenny Venito in a menacing turn), tells him to kidnap the mentally disabled brother of a federal prosecutor and hold the kid hostage until the fed drops charges against a mob kingpin. Because Louie doesn't think Gigli's competent, he also hires Ricki to baby-sit. (If Louie thinks Larry will botch the job, why not just use the woman?)

The hostage, obsessive Brian (Justin Bartha), is a cute Rain Man with none of the math skills or drawbacks. He leaves the group home where he lives without protest, stays quiet whenever he might endanger the kidnappers (though he can't shut up at other times), suffers interruptions in beloved routines without complaint. After his Tourette's syndrome makes its "comic" effect, he miraculously stops cursing.

But miracles come easily to "Gigli." Larry and Ricki fall in love, despite her avowal of lesbianism. Larry's mom (Lainie Kazan) doesn't seem to notice that Brian is mentally disabled on his visit to her house, or wonder why her son is ferrying the kid around. Ricki's deranged ex-lover (Missy Crider) threatens to kill herself and Larry, then blithely departs.

With John Powell's twinkly, saccharine musical cues reminding us what to feel, characters bounce toward the obligatory happy ending, which in this case is as likely as a manned landing on the sun. The movie never asks itself the obvious question: How did the kindly, self-aware Ricki become a presumed killer?

She's sympathetic because she quotes Chinese philosophers, reads books about inner peace and diagnoses Larry's stunted emotional growth. Yet she has no edge, no meanness; she's about as dangerous as an angleworm. Brest never resolves this conflict or explains adequately why she's drawn to Larry the likeable lout.

Brest gets credit for writing an ending that shouldn't lead to a sequel and for keeping "Gigli" an hour shorter than his last snore-a-thon, "Meet Joe Black." He gets no points for using Al Pacino (who won an Oscar in his "Scent of a Woman") as the mob boss.

Pacino, fey and ponytailed and roaring like a wind tunnel, is the anti-Walken. He rants through a monologue about human thumbs - are they fingers or merely digits? - before blowing out someone's brains, as Brest offers a close-up of a fish nibbling a blob of gray matter. Together, Pacino and Walken prove ham is only palatable when served on wry.

ah shit. Lawrence Toppman.

Gigli Grad

http://www.ericdsnider.com/view.php?mrkey=1695

We knew Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez could make bad movies separately, but “Gigli” demonstrates that, in a true example of synergy at work, their combined efforts can generate even more badness.

Larry Gigli (pronounced “Gee-lee”) is the name of Affleck’s character, a Jersey-born mid-level thug who works for mid-level crime boss Louis (Lenny Venito) in Los Angeles. Larry’s latest assignment is to kidnap the mentally handicapped younger brother of a federal prosecutor who’s been making trouble for Louis’ boss, in the hopes of getting the guy to play ball.

But since Larry has a penchant for screwing up Louis’ assignments, he is given a partner to keep an eye on him. She is Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), a stunning woman whose clothing always accentuates her greatest asset, who is extremely well-read and knowledgeable about psychology, and who also is a lesbian. This frustrates the ultra-macho Larry, who can’t conceive of a woman unwilling to sleep with him, let alone one smarter than he is.

And so they hole up in Larry’s apartment, taking care of the kidnapped Brian (Justin Bartha) and awaiting instructions from Louis while Larry makes irritating attempts at converting Ricki.

As you can see, the film is already fraught with peril. Ben and J-Lo have their various charms, but neither is much good at acting. Consequently, Affleck is not convincing as a Jersey tough-guy, and not once did I believe Lopez as a lesbian, a hired thug, or a person who knows big words. The acting is not bad, per se, just wrong. More blame should be placed on the director, Martin Brest ("Meet Joe Black”), for miscasting his leads, or on the writer, who is also Martin Brest, for penning such pointless, meandering dialogue.

There is also the matter of having a mentally handicapped character featured so prominently. Bartha’s performance does not cross over into “making fun” territory, but it does teeter awkwardly on the line between being funny and being sad. One doesn’t know how to react to him, which often makes viewing the film uncomfortable.

Taken as a whole, though, the presence of a difficult character is the least of this film’s problems. This is a movie that manages to keep finding new ways of being stupid, from the forced (and rather insulting) romance between Larry and Ricki, to their crass conversation about the relative values of the male and female genitalia, to the hilarious way soft music cues indicate when we’re supposed to be touched by Brian’s innocence, to Al Pacino’s one-scene foray into outrageous over-acting (a realm he is not unfamiliar with, of course). I will also mention a brief glimpse of Lainie Kazan’s thong-clad rear end.

On a more positive note, there a brief appearance by the ever-insane Christopher Walken, who brightens any film merely by entering it.

In the end, “Gigli” wants us to feel good, but that is hopeless. The plot is minimal, leaving us to watch the characters just sit around being themselves -- a bad thing, since they’re all either dull or unlikable. This is a movie all about relationships and connections between people, and none of the relationships or connections come across believably. I hope Ben and J-Lo are doing a better job relating to each other in real life, or else there’s serious trouble ahead.

don't be offended. laugh.

Ben-J.Lo hype notwithstanding, 'Gigli' is heinous

http://ae.bayarea.com/entertainment/ui/bayarea/movie.html?id=107733&reviewId=12762

Despite our best intentions to stay pure, unsullied and open-minded about "Gigli," the advance buzz was so vehement and widespread that, short of a six-month stint in a nunnery, it was nigh impossible not to have heard that the movie was awful prior to seeing it.

Awful can be enticing in its own way, especially if it lends itself to camp such as the infamous "Showgirls." But this Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez love story is also painfully dull and remarkably tasteless. In short, it's no fun at all.

In the worst performance of his career, Affleck plays Larry Gigli, the least attractive character in the world, a two-bit hood who acts as an enforcer for bad guy Louis (Lenny Venito), the least believable crime boss in movie history. Louis and Gigli's primary form of communication, both with each other and everyone else, is a certain swear word referencing the sex act.

It's so overused in "Gigli" that it may have a negative-stimulus "Clockwork Orange"-like effect on anyone who sees this movie, literally scaring the expletive impulse out of us.

Louis assigns Gigli (rhymes with really) a big job, kidnapping the mentally challenged brother of a federal prosecutor who has the goods on some mob bigwig from New York. Here's where Gigli's stupidity really begins to show. He goes to a home for the disabled to pick up Brian (newcomer Justin Bartha). It is clear from Bartha's lousy "Rain Man" impression and incessant ramblings about "the Baywatch" (he's horny, isn't that cute?) that the character is mentally disabled. Yet Gigli spends the next 30 minutes mystified by Brian's disability and berating him like the neighborhood bully for it. His choice of abuse ranges from "What a moron" to "Why don't you act (expletive) normal for a minute?"

Why Martin Brest ("Scent of a Woman," "Midnight Run"), who wrote "Gigli" as well as directed it, would think any of this would make us find Affleck's character endearing is unfathomable. Gigli is a blowhard, has no discernible personality and an IQ that hovers dangerously close to Brian's. Still, we are supposed to believe that the other enforcer Louis hires to oversee this critical job, the sultry Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), will find something worthwhile inside this lout.

All Hollywood love stories must have obstacles, and Brest has assigned Ricki and Gigli's romance a doozy. Not only is Gigli a leering moron, but Ricki is a lesbian, or as he graciously puts it, "a stone cold dyke." She's pure male fantasy -- a scantily clad woman from the Sharon Stone school of lesbianism who enjoys flaunting herself in the faces of men everywhere and who will, eventually, put out for the "right" guy. I always felt Stone's character in "Basic Instinct" made a dubious choice in bestowing her favors on the cop played by Michael Douglas, whose butt was already saggy when she got to him. But Douglas looks like a dreamboat compared to Affleck's slack-jawed Gigli.

Brest clings to Lopez's spectacular good looks like a life preserver. Every peripheral character in "Gigli" is required to comment on Ricki's beauty, from Lainie Kazan, who gives a mortifying performance as Gigli's trashy, pink-thong-clad mother, to Al Pacino, who shows up late in the game as the New York mobster. (Presumably his shout-and-spit performance is meant to repay Brest the favor for that ill-gotten Oscar for "Scent of a Woman.") Christopher Walken salvages some dignity by merely cocking an eyebrow at Ricki's well-displayed gams during his brief and bizarre appearance as a clueless federal agent.

All this gratuitous Lopez worship is unlikely to do anything to dispel the diva image that plagues her so; she comes across as an actress who wouldn't know what to do with a role that didn't rely on her beauty. Which is very, very sad.

Your decision to see "Gigli" really depends on how much you want to see Affleck and Lopez make out. Fair enough. Their love story has sold many a magazine. But a cautionary word: No matter how titillating that prospect is, sitting through the rest of this tasteless mess isn't worth it. That stomach-turning "Jenny From the Block" video has everything you need, and it's a good two hours shorter.

Gigli 1.5/4 stars

http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/2a460f93626cd4678625624c007f2b46/b34d0aed88594b2888256d73007a80b5?OpenDocument

That deafening sound you hear is negative buzz. Gigli just opened, and already it has plenty. Early test screenings started it. The media fueled it. And the release of the film may finally conclude our on-going fascination with A-list celebrity couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

For those who never tune into E! (shame on you), here’s the backstory. Ben and Jen fell in love on the Gigli set. Fireworks off-screen, though, didn’t translate to chemistry on-screen, and the movie was shredded by test audiences. Columbia originally planned to open Gigli in November 2002, but hesitated and shelved the film until now, which usually signifies disaster.

The results aren’t as dire as expected, but they remain far from entertaining. Together, Affleck and Lopez have approximately six good movies to their names. Gigli isn’t one of them. Vulgar, insensitive and unaware of its direction, the split-personality character study wavers from mob drama to romantic comedy when it should’ve picked one and stuck with it.

Blame writer/director Martin Brest, who has helmed good movies in the past (Midnight Run, Scent of a Woman), but hasn’t written a script since 1979’s Going in Style. His rust coats Gigli like a suit of armor. There’s no rhythm to his putrid dialogue, no flow to his preposterous scenes. Conversations are loaded with sex talk, but devoid of heat. The movie occasionally builds momentum, but crass punch lines linger around every corner, ready to stop this train in its tracks.

The story centers on thug-for-hire Larry Gigli (Affleck), which rhymes with “really.” Petty mobster Louis (Lenny Venito) orders Gigli to kidnap Brian (Justin Bartha), the mentally disabled brother of a federal prosecutor. They hope to use their hostage as leverage in a case pending against their crime boss, Starkman (Al Pacino). But shortly after assigning Gigli to the kidnapping, Louis loses faith and sends in levelheaded Ricki (Lopez) for reinforcements.

Logic exits once Jenny from the block enters, and erratic character motivations raise more questions than answers. Why does Louis assign Gigli to such an important task if he doesn’t trust him? And what sours Louis on Gigli, who up until this point seems to be a bullheaded but loyal goon? The answer, while pat, is that Gigli needs Louis to be hostile so that Ricki can enter the picture and our cute couple can commence mugging.

As for the celebrated twosome, they labor through with heads held high but are constantly betrayed by Brest’s impractical script. Lopez diligently recites her loquacious lines about Zen living, but she’s not believable as a beauty with a brain, a pacifist packed into a denim mini-skirt. Affleck’s not sure whether to play for exaggerated laughs or straight-up intimidation. The script gives him no guidance, so he haphazardly tries both, whether it fits the mood of the current scene or not.

Newcomer Bartha sees Brian as a poor man’s version of Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man character, but never amounts to more than a device. He periodically suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, sporadically breaks out into old school rap songs like Sir Mix a Lot’s “Baby Got Back” (a J. Lo homage, no doubt), and dreams of living in the place where Baywatch is filmed. Brest’s incessant attempts to humiliate this character border on cruelty. Only the deliciously over-the-top cameos by Pacino and Christopher Walken snatch Gigli from the trash heap and give you two reasons to eventually watch this movie on HBO.

The rest is forgettable. Brest’s insufferable screenplay is rife with endless blow job references and ambiguous questions regarding Gigli’s heterosexuality. You’d think Affleck’s buddy Kevin Smith took a shot at the rewrites. Heck, if Jason Mewes had plugged himself into the Brian character and the action had shifted from Santa Monica to Red Bank, NJ, Gigli could have been a Smith movie.

Ironically, it’s Smith who has the most to lose over the Gigli backlash. Affleck and Lopez are set to star in the director’s forthcoming Jersey Girl, due out in February. Perhaps Ashton Kutcher will have married the Olsen Twins by then, though, and the world will have moved past the merger of Ben and Jen.

Gigli 1/4 stars
Misguided 'Gigli' just plain crummy

http://ae.twincities.com/entertainment/ui/twincities/movie.html?id=107733&reviewId=12755

Jennifer Lopez plays a lesbian in "Gigli," and Ben Affleck plays a heterosexual man, which means they have one thing in common: Both of them are in a crummy movie.

Gigli" is bad, but not as bad as the publicity would suggest, and at least it's bad in unique ways. Almost unremittingly crass, it nevertheless finds time for Lopez to deliver an improbably lovely speech about sex between women.

A misguided attempt to graft "The Sopranos" and "Rain Man" onto a romantic comedy, it nevertheless tries to do something fresh. And although it is condescending about both homosexuality and disabilities, it nevertheless — OK, there is no "nevertheless" for that one.

Buried beneath a lot of slop, there's an intriguing attempt to shake up the romantic-comedy formula: What if you made a movie that did more than pay lip service to the idea of the woman being in charge? What if she were the aggressive half of the couple, as is probably the case in about half the heterosexual relationships you could name?

You will probably read reviews that suggest the problems in "Gigli" (it's Affleck's character's name and it rhymes with "really") begin with Affleck and Lopez, but I disagree.

True, best supporting maniacs Christopher Walken and Al Pacino walk off with the acting honors, but Affleck's role is so unpleasant there's not much he can do other than squint likably to let us know redemption is on the way, which he does. Lopez has a more multidimensional part, and, although I don't think she's the ideal actress to play it, she's not awful.

If you want to talk awful, let's discuss the script, which treats being a lesbian as if it's roughly the same thing as being a blonde — sometimes Lopez is, sometimes she isn't (and who knows why, between this and "Chasing Amy," Affleck has now chosen two roles in which he attempts to "conquer" lesbians). Pair that with the film's offensive, dated notion that lesbians are more masculine than heterosexual women, and you've got yourself a set of gender attitudes that could have been scripted by Mamie Eisenhower.

The story isn't much better. Affleck and Lopez play low-level mobsters who flirt while kidnapping Brian, a young man with an unspecified impairment (he refers to himself as "brain-damaged"). This awkward situation gives the movie's music a chance to get mawkish every time Brian speaks, gives undiscriminating viewers a chance to "aw" at how adorable he is whenever it's convenient for the movie to make him adorable and gives the rest of us a chance to agree with a line Walken utters: "It's almost too stupid for the mind to grasp."

Gigli 1/4 Stars
Unfocused, badly acted 'Gigli' is irredeemable mess

http://ae.freep.com/entertainment/ui/michigan/movie.html?id=107733&reviewId=12767

The one positive thing that can be said about pessimism is that things are usually not as horrible as imagined. That cannot, however, be said about "Gigli," a movie even worse than had been rumored.

"Gigli" is not one of those projects that started with a good script only to be developed into sad submission by studio hacks. It is not a movie that has been sabotaged by its high-profile stars, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, or compromised, a la "Cleopatra," by any attraction that might have developed while the film was in production. It has not been ruined in post-production, though its original script has been trimmed and a more upbeat ending added after audiences at a test screening said they would have preferred a happier one, which test-screening audiences always do.

Nope. This is just an awful movie, period. It was probably pitched to studio executives as "Prizzi's Honor" meets "Rain Man," but it has none of the cutting wit of the former and none of the redeeming conviction of the latter.

Neither Affleck nor Lopez is the best Hollywood has to offer, but when they are working with decent scripts and good directors -- Affleck in "The Sum of All Fears," Lopez in "Out of Sight," for example -- they are both more than acceptable. "Gigli" is a film that begins badly and gets worse and worse, like someone who has been knocked unconscious in an accident and then bleeds to death because he gets no attention. When you leave the theater, you half-expect someone to be standing at the door apologizing and handing you your money back.

Now I'm going to tell you what this movie is about, so you may want to take a Tylenol. Affleck is the title character, an enforcer who is in the employ of a disagreeable middle-manager thug named Louis (Lenny Venito). Louis can't pronounce his enforcer's name, which, Gigli says as if he has said it a million times before, rhymes with "really." We expect this to be a running gag, but since it barely limps out of the gate, director Martin Brest doesn't press the issue.

Gigli's assignment is to kidnap a mentally troubled teenager from a care facility, which he does with alarming ease, and keep him hidden until the teenager's older federal prosecutor brother drops the charges against whoever hired Louis to hire Gigli to do the job.

The kid, whose name is Brian (Justin Bartha), not only repeats the same things over and over but also suffers from Tourette's syndrome. This greatly agitates Gigli, but before he can go too crazy, a woman named Ricki (Lopez) shows up and announces she has been hired by Louis to keep an eye on Gigli to make sure he doesn't screw up the job. Even though Gigli hates her on sight, he still wants to sleep with her, but she informs him he is not her type because he has a penis. She is a lesbian.

This revelation leads to a good deal of argument about which organ is more powerful, the penis or the vagina, none of which is even remotely amusing. While waiting for the prosecutor to crack, Ricki -- not her real name -- does yoga exercises that drive Gigli crazy, but then everything drives Gigli crazy, especially Brian, who doesn't like the food and insists on going to Baywatch, which he apparently believes to be a real place as opposed to a syndicated TV show.

I could tell you more about this movie, like the scene in which Gigli is browbeaten into going to see his mother, played by Lainie Kazan, and giving her a shot, which is made more convenient by the fact she is wearing a thong, which is not something I ever want to think about again.

I could tell you that the movie is almost two hours long and that much of that time is filled with people yelling, one of whom is Al Pacino, who shows up to shout in the same way he did in Brest's "Scent of a Woman," for which, for reasons I will never understand, he was rewarded with an Oscar.

I could also tell you that Christopher Walken shows up briefly and inexplicably as a cop, never to be seen again, and that when Gigli finally gets Ricki to, as he puts it, "jump the fence," in yet another plot turn I could not begin to comprehend, she is wearing a robe and we are not treated to even a flash of her famous rump.

Or I could just tell you that this is the most misbegotten movie I have seen all summer, which, considering "Hollywood Homicide" and "Alex and Emma," is an accomplishment of some sort, but not one I would want to witness again. Really: Rhymes with unbelievable.