What the Hell Were They Thinking?!

Bennifer: stealing our hearts and our movie dollars from 2002-2004.

Cast of Characters:
Larry Gigli – Ben Affleck
Ricki – Jennifer Lopez
Brian – Justin Bartha
Louis – Lenny Venito
Det. Stanley Jacobellis – Christopher Walken
Starkman – Al Pacino

Director – Martin Brest
Writer – Martin Brest
Producer – Casey Silver & Martin Brest
Distributor – Sony Pictures Releasing
Running Time – 121 minutes
Rated R for sexual content, pervasive language and brief strong violence.

Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) is a tough-acting but low-ranking mobster, who’s name is actually pronounced “Gee-lee” which rhymes with “really” and don’t you fuggin’ fuhget it or else that dumb, greasy guido will just keep reminding you. One day, he’s given an assignment to kidnap the mentally-challenged brother, Brian (Justin Bartha), of a powerful federal prosecutor in order to save New York mob boss Starkman (Al Pacino) from prison. Gigli is able to successfully convince Brian to come with him by promising to take him to “the Baywatch”, Brian’s obsession; however, since the man who ordered the kidnapping, Louis (Lenny Venito), very understandly doesn’t trust an idiot like Gigli to get the job done right, he hires a woman known as Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) to help.

Kill me now.

Please… I’m begging you.

Despite its notorious reception, no one can deny the initial curiosity people had about Gigli.

Hey, hey, hey, HEY!!!! I said initial, alright?

After all, this was the first chance for moviegoers to catch the sweepingly romantic courtship that was “Bennifer” onscreen. But after everyone finally go to see the B-Fleck and J-Lo film, on came the ridicule and scorn. In its first week, the film took in just under $4 million at the box office from 2,200 theaters. In its second week, it took a small little dip of -82%, grossing a little over $650,000 (the biggest 2nd weekend drop at the time, now… shockingly only the fourth). By its third week, it kamikaze dived its way from 2,200 U.S. theaters to only 73 multiplexes compassionate enough to still grant it a spot somewhere at the corner end of their establishment.

You know, the ones right by a back exit. That way you can just slink right out the door without anyone else knowing how badly you debased yourself over the film you actually paid legit, legal currency to see.

In the end, Gigli’s grand total at the box office was a little over $7 million. In comparison to its total budget, let’s just say it didn’t even hit a third of what Affleck and Lopez were paid alone.

It’s hard to pin down what exactly this film is. Is it a mobster thriller? Mobster comedy? Heartfelt Rain Man buddy comedy? Chasing Amy style rom-com?

Man, Affleck sure loves to go after those lesbians.

As to which way it wants to go, Gigli can’t make up its mind, but there’s still a consistency running all throughout this film.

Everything is equal parts dog shit.

This reminds me of that episode of Full House (yes, we’re going way back to my childhood) where Michelle Tanner wanted to be a cook, so she’d take random items such as tuna fish and Oreo ice cream and combine them together to make whatever the hell kinda creation she was going for. This came much to taste-tester Uncle Jesse’s displeasure, but hey, at least the Olsen twins were eating something. Here, writer/director Martin Brest throws whatever he can inside the blender. If one ingredient doesn’t work, then maybe throwing in another and another and another might work, no matter how little sense it makes to the film.

Imagine if another directing Martin surnamed Scorsese was looking over the script for Goodfellas and, not being fully satisfied with what he read, thought, “You know what this film really needs to hit a home run? A horney dyke and goofy retard.”

Originally, Gigli had a more tragic ending. By tragic ending, I’m referring to the movie’s story and not it’s critical and box office reception. However, after it tested for screen audiences who were turned off by the conclusion, the studio did a complete 180 with reshoots and a new marketing strategy to advertise the film as a lighthearted romantic comedy with just a touch of dark mob edge. But, unfortunately, the altered ending doesn’t change the utter catastrophe that is the rest of the movie. Questions are raised more than answered, with the big question right from the start being if Louis doesn’t trust Gigli to do the job right, why the hell would he go to him in the first place? The bargain bin Rain Man performance by Justin Bartha is more awkward than heartfelt or funny. An ex-girlfriend of Ricki’s shows up out of nowhere, overacts the shit out of her scene, then lets out an excited “Whoo!” as she attempts suicide ’cause tonal consistency is way overrated. I mean, you can’t really nail the emotional impact of a suicide scene without a lovably doofy sped popping in and noticing that “dey need shum bandaids”. And, of course, what’s an Al Pacino film without him showing up at the and and throwing one of his trademark “You ab.so.lute fucking fuck cunt FUCKING FAIRY, YOU – OOOOHH-AHHHH!!!!” fits, before then collecting a hefty paycheck and dancing his heart out all the way to the bank.

Now, can you make sense of all that? ‘Cause I can’t.

Even more inexplicable is the random cameo appearance by Christopher Walken, whose sole, single-scene reason for being in this film is to stress the importance of how there is, in fact, an investigation going on surrounding the kidnapped Brian. Walken shows up, acts all Christopher Walken-y, talks about pie and ice cream on his head, then leaves the film for good with no resolution whatsoever. Most of his scene involves him and Ben Affleck staring back at each other for unbearably long stretches of time. The last shot between the two of them just goes on and on and on, and as I sat through it all, I figured once Walken’s gone the movie has to be over.

Only five seconds went by. There’s ninety more minutes left to go.

…

Yay.

The most damning offense here, though, is the most obvious, and that’s the shocking lack of chemistry between Affleck and Lopez, which sizzles with as much sensuality and excitment as a handy with sandpaper. It’s bad enough that these two are the least convincing mobsters in film history, but they somehow gotta be even less convincing as a pair of potential love interests? Seriously, how the fuck does a real-life couple seem absolutely incapable of creating even the tiniest bit of chemistry between each other?

Romeo and Juliet’s limp, lifeless corpses make a more sensational romantic pair.

Oh – oops. Spoiler alert for those who haven’t read Romeo and Juliet.

Mobsters they may not be, but they sure know how to talk the threatening talk, and then talk the talk some more and then talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, talk, talky talk talky, talky, talky talk. It’d all be fine if the dialogue wasn’t so cringe-inducing. Long coversational set pieces consist of Jenny from the Block describing a painful eye-gouging torture, one of which I would’ve heartily welcomed along with the removal of my ear drums. There’s an even more painful monologue from her on why women are sexually superior to men. We also get repeated instances of Affleck’s idiot Gigli not getting hint after hint that Ricki likes a box lunch, which just constantly puzzles him ’cause his dumb, greasy self is proably thinking, “Hey-a, whys this fuggin’ cookie not-a wantin’ to honk on this big dick, meaty meatball marinarah footloooong?!” Most notoriously, there exists in this film what is quite possibly the worst come on in cinema. I present to you…

“It’s turkey time… Gobble-gobble.”

…

😐

That’s what Viagra needs on the side of the box: “If you have an erection that lasts more than 4 hours, then just watch J-Lo ruin both Thanksgiving and your libido in one sentence, and kiss your stiffy goodbye… forever.”

Surprisingly, there’s more keen insight on sex given by Bartha’s Raymond Babbitt wannabe, who comments on J-Lo’s attractiveness by saying it makes him “sneeze in his underwear”.

That’s gotta be utterly depressing, huh, Gigli? You’re getting out-macked by the waterhead you’ve been dragging around town with you.

Serves him right, though. ‘Cause, go figure, after all his futile attempts at hitting-on Ricki for the entire fucking picture, that stupid goombah is too dense to put two and two together when she finally spreads her “turkey legs” wide open next to him in bed while he just stares back at her like an idiot going, “… Uh – what?” All that mousse used in his hair had to have burned away what few brain cells he may have had up inside that thick, hollow noggin of his.

My God, you know how many awesome movies Ben Affleck had to direct just to atone for this one steaming pile of shit?

It’s a shame that this film brought filmmaker Martin Brest’s career to a halt. Brest once had a distinguished career that included a fine feature-length debut, Going in Style (starring acting legends George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg); two of the best action comedies of the ’80s, Beverly Hills Cop and the vastly underrated Midnight Run; and Scent of a Woman, which earned Al Pacino his first Oscar win (more of a “give him due” award, but still a great performance). Then came Meet Joe Black, a film that accomplished the head-scratching feat of turning a 90-page screenplay into a 3-hour-long film. Not the worst of his career by any stretch, but it was certainly the start of a slippery slope that would eventually free fall its way down to this train wreck like a horrific, Bennifer shaped California mudslide completely devasting a traumatized moviegoing community.

He hasn’t done anything since.

Overall, this film’s legacy can be summed up in two words: Kevin Smith. It would be of no surprise to me if, after watching this film, Smith went forty over the speed limit and ran five red lights and a stop sign, causing a twenty car pile-up that would result in eight casualites and leave fourteen critically injured, to hurry home from the theater and do a quick rewrite of Jersey Girl, the soon-to-be released film that would also star Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. When promoting that film, there’s a reason Smith, whether joking or not, incessantly promised audiences that J-Lo would die at the beginning.

That reason is named Gigli.

Deep Thoughts by Gigli:

1) “Lemme tell you something, in every relationship, there’s a bull and a cow. It just so happens that in dis relationship, right here with me and you, I’m da bull, you’re da cow. Alright?” – Larry Gigli

2) “That’s why these lesbians are always going out and buyin’ – ya know – spendin’ all their dough on like – ya know – sexual appliances and erotic monkey wrenches and shit, tryin’ to compensate for what they don’t have… they not gettin’… the penis.” – Larry Gigli

3) “The penis is like some sort of bizarre sea slug or like a really long toe.” – Ricki the Lesbian

4) “The mouth is the twin sister, the almost exact look-alike of what? Not the toe. The mouth is the twin sister of the vagina. And all creatures big and small seek the orifice, the opening, to be taken in, engulfed, to be squeezed, lovingly crushed by what is truly the all-powerful, all-encompassing.” – Ricki the Lesbian

5) “There is no place nowhere that has been the object of more ambitions, more battles than the sweet sacred mystery between a woman’s legs that I am proud to call… my pussy.” – Ricki the Lesbian

6) “When my penith sneezes, I thay, “God bleth you’… God bleth you, penith.” – Brian the Retard

Somewhere out there, high above in the sky, up in the clouds… Cupid just clipped his wings, impaled himself with his arrow, then plummeted straight down to his death.

Judgment: More clumsy in its plotting than a drunk Jerry Lewis trying to tap dance his way through a Faberge egg shop, Gigli meanders and meanders and meanders its way some more through a two hour run time that feels more like eight. Between the wretched dialogue, directionless plot and two extremely unlikeable lead charcters who generate as much chemistry as there is oxygen to breathe in space, this is a cinematic crap-bomb so disastrous it makes the 1906 San Francisco earthquake look like a trivial fender bender.

Sentence: C’mon, J-Lo and Ben Affleck followed up this turd with films like Surviving Christmas, Paycheck, Monster-in-Law and The Boy Next Door. I think they’ve both been punished enough.

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