Gigli (2003) Reviews

• Critics, we owe you an apology

  gregsrants2004-01-18

  `Awful', `Hopeless', `Terrible', `Benifer's Gate'. These are the words I read from some of North America's most respected film critics in my research before viewing the debacle Gigli starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. At first, I wondered aloud 'how bad can it be'. After all, how often does the common public agree with the harsh words of a critic. Besides, Pacino and Walken in the same film should be enough to generate even one star out of even the sternest critic, right. Right? Gigli is about two unbelievable gangsters who are assigned the task of kidnapping and watching over a prosecutors mentally challenged brother while also keeping an open eye on each other to ensure the success of the operation. Ben plays Gigli, an accent challenged goon who is as believable as Madonna in a nuns uniform, and Jennifer plays Ricky, a lesbian gangster who is primarily hired to ensure that Gigli doesn't screw things up. Along the way, plenty of bit characters and ridiculous side plots stymie the progress of the mission. Ricky has an ex-lover show up at the house and attempt suicide, the gangsters ask for the thumb of the prisoner sent to the prosecutor, Gigli has to rush to his mothers house and learns that good ole ma knows all about lesbians and throughout the film we are constantly annoyed by conversations between Gigli and his crime boss, Lenny over the phone. I could go on, but what's the point. Gigli was one of the worst reviewed films of 2003. So I began to wonder why this film in particular ended up on everyone's poop list even though there were plenty of worse films people were throwing good money at (Boat Trip, Bad Boys II, Masked and Anonymous). The answer became pretty obvious. Nothing was expected of these other entries, but Gigli had the star power of the two most talked about celebrities in Tinseltown. Throw in director Martin Brest who has had incredible success with Scent of a Woman, Midnight Run and Beverley Hills Cop, and sprinkle in the veteran a-list power of Christopher Walken and Al Pacino. With a recipe as rich as these ingredients suggest, one's expectations are set to a higher standard. Gigli simply does not deliver the goods. The dialogue is so laughable that you expect this film to have midnight showings a la Rocky Horror Picture Show in the next ten years, and the characters are so eccentrically hysterical that you can't help but cringe in your seat in embarrassment for all those involved. So now back to the critics. We, owe you an apology. Most of the year, we read your reviews and chastise your opinions, but every once and a while, a consensus amongst your peers keeps us from going in mass and spending our hard earned dollars on crap like this. A $6 million dollar domestic take for Gigli is an example of the power that you possess, and for that, I will keep reading.

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• $54,000,000! Where did all the money go?

  caspian19782004-06-16

  I saw this movie and hated about 99% of it. After I found out it cost $54,000,000 to make, I started to hate the other 1%. If this is considered a love story between Lopez and Affleck, may I ask...where was the love? A sex scene with no nudity, no passion, and no sound....why? Supporting characters like Christopher Walken and others were introduced and went no where...why? The story alone peeks when Pacino arrives and shoots one of the cast members. From there, i was hoping that Pacino had finished the job and killed the rest of the cast. If that happened, the movie would have been good. Instead, the movie drags and drags and drags. The audience is not going to care if the actors in the movie learn something or progress if they don't care about the characters. Lopez and Affleck's characters do not exist! Much like the ugly tattoos on Affleck's shoulder, the movie was not fun to look at. In my opinion, and I do not think I am wrong, if Lopez had a small nude scene and / or the movie was done as an independent film for under 2 or 3 million, Gigli would have been a giant success. Instead, we are left to wonder....why?

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• Those Five dollars could've got me some chicken McNuggets!!!!

  robojesus7772003-08-06

  I could've went to McDonald's with my five buck and gotten something to eat but INSTEAD I went and saw the new J-lo/ Ben Affleck puke bonanza titled; Gigli. God, I'm an IDIOT!!! The first ten minutes weren't so bad but then I realized I was in "Finding Nemo". When I made my way to the right theater- I was horrifed!This was Gigli? A J-Lo movie ALL ABOUT J-LO- Well I never! Anywho- there's only too things worse then this movie: 1, Burning to death and 2, burning to death while watching "Gigli" for A movie titled "Gigli" -- I never laughed once! Total rip off! Horrible! I give it 4 stars **** ...out of 240!

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• Rhymes with 'Really'. As in Really Bad.

  bigboybhatia2004-06-07

  I borrowed my friend's Gigli DVD to see if the movie was really as bad as the ratings and other comments here will indicate. The answer is yes. When the film first came out, it rocketed to number 1 on the bottom 100 list. That ranking was undeserved, as the movie does have decent technical aspects (editing, sound) relative to Manos and Future War. Its good to see Gigli settling a little further down the list. From the outset, I could tell the dialog was just horrible. It was unfunny 90% of the time, and contained useless overlong scenes. One example was the whole 'pleasing a woman' sequence where Lopez was doing Yoga on a mat while talking with Affleck. Just horrible. Jennifer Lopez has to win the award for most painfully miscast actress. She is totally unbelievable as a Lesbian girl gangster. She failed to convince me that she had ever broken the law in the past. 'I did some really bad things' -- yeah right. I would avoid this like the plague. 1/10

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• You must never see it.

  David_Frames2005-05-25

  Smug and a self-adorned cine-sophisticate, I rented out Gigli with a friend ready to scrutinise it with the benefit of my enlightened view of film. It was going to be an hilarious two hours. I'd settled down in a very comfy armchair and had poured a glass of some Austrian glug. I couldn't wait to laugh at the stupid dialogue and that ridiculous script but the joke was on us because Gigli transcends the established limit of effective urine stealing. This is because its simply so horrible that you can forget trying to make yourself look intelligent and media literate by ripping the bladder evacuate because the scale of misguided conception baffles the mind and eventually shuts it down. It's like being hit by a sack full of bricks in the face for a full 114 minutes. There's a teasing little scene with J-Lo early on when she tells a bunch of unruly kids that there's a martial arts move that can gouge out the eyes and simultaneously destroy the visual cortex meaning that not only are you rendered blind but you'll never be able to remember anything you've seen. For the Gigli viewer this is like showing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to a hall packed with diabetics. You're left to ponder the short term agony weighed up against the long term benefit as Martin Brest's story unfolds with the principle characters of a unlikeable, emotionally and sexually retarded thug with a soft centre (a fat Affleck), a lesbian who isn't really a lesbian because you can be converted to heterosexuality by an emotionally and sexually retarded thug and an actually retarded man who was probably supposed to be a Rainman-type character who redeems Affleck's arrogant meathead but is in fact a cringe inducing, self-harm facilitating caricature of the mentally handicapped. Look, many movies look good on paper and suffer from poor execution but what's head scratching about Gigli is that it's as dire on the page as it is on screen. Broadly it's supposed to be a romantic comedy, sort of Out of Sight meets Rainman meets Whats New Pussycat? but it's stillborn as a criminal caper, devoid of anything approaching sensitivity and has some of the worst battle of the sexes banter that ever crawled onto the screen. Brest, who directed the dire 16 hour remake of Meet John Doe, Meet Joe Black, shows that when it comes to misjudging material he's peerless. His crimes here are compounded by the fact that this is his own script. That script, incidentally is a roll call of on screen horror. Witness, if you can, the Penis Vs. Vagina scene in which Affleck argues the case for the male genitals or the tear jerking moment in which the soft hearted Affleck, having given the Mentally Handicapped Brian relationship advice, looks on like a proud father as his new friends woos an Australian bombshell during the filming of a Baywatch beach party. You'll envy the man who gets his brains blown out and eaten by goldfish or the horrendous girlfriend of J-Lo, who having realised which film she's in, slits her wrists...stupidly, the wrong way. Once its all over and you sit there open mouthed you're left to (briefly) ponder why Brest did it. Did the kidnapped brother have to be disabled? Surely there must have been a more effective way of facilitating Affleck's transition from idiot to slightly more compassionate idiot? Did J-Lo have to be a Lesbian? Sure, Affleck has to have some obstacles toward getting the girl and we all like a bit of sexual tension but gay viewers must have been flabbergasted that a man who describes men and women as "the bull and the cow" and does lovable things like warmly looking vacuous and endearingly been obnoxious should persuade a woman to er, "hop over the fence". And even if Brest was blinded by his own vanity what in the name of Beverly Hills Cop persuaded Christopher Walken and Al Pacino to cameo? None of it makes any sense. The bottle of wine I had with the film was good though but by the time I regained consciousness the bit left in the bottle was undrinkable.

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