Gigli (Martin Brest, 2003)

[paranoid-knight2008]

I always heard it was one of the worst ever. I even made a fake Criterion cover of it as a joke.

However, I just watched the film for the first time. And even though its far from being a masterpiece, it is actually a good film, with some scenes that are actually quite great. The screenplay is far from bad, and while Affleck overacts a bit, he's alright - Lopez is fine; and the chemisty between both actors is strong.

I'd actually settle and give the film 8/10. Seriously!

It's a good movie, I thought. I'm quite surprised by the hate it gets. It's a well-written flick.

(TRIVIA: The film was originally a 160 minute long crime thriller, but Revolution Studios cut 40 minutes from the film and re-wrote and re-shot 30 minutes of it to fit as a romantic comedy for the sake of the tabloid love for "Bennifer".) I'm curious about this 160 minute cut. Supposedly it was more violent, Christopher Walken had a larger role, and the film was a whole other movie altogether. When it was screened, it had some good reviews! However, Revolution Studios made the film what it is (which isn't really bad, but the flaws are apparently the doing of them, as Brest's violent and dark scenes are completely well-executed.)

Thoughts on this underrated flick? :-k

[HerrSchreck]

Every single scene I've seen (on youtube) with Affleck and/or Lopez was utterly absurd, but I like both scenes I've seen w Pacino (who gives Bennifer a covert finger at a certain point, and treats the whole thing like a joke) and Walken who seem to be straining o high hell to appear detatched from the proceedings.

[Fiery Angel]

I'll reserve judgment until the Criterion BluRay is announced.

[paranoid-knight2008]

I'll reserve judgment until the Criterion BluRay is announced.

It's getting a Criterion BluRay release? :O

Is this sarcasm?

[domino harvey]

I once saw a bit of this film while flipping through TV channels. Ben Affleck picked up someone's laptop and smashed it over his knee, but not before telling the unfortunate victim to check out "WWW Dot Suck My Dick Dot Com." Maybe the rest of the film is a masterpiece, but I'll never know

[Fiery Angel]

Well, something's got to replace the canceled Ran.

[paranoid-knight2008]

Haha. That line was one of the few in it that sucked.

However, there is one scene in which Affleck and Lopez discuss human genetalia that is very, very well-written. I think critic Roger Ebert also said that this scene was very well-written. Well... it is! Imo. Lol.

[domino harvey]

Okay, so I know reclaiming an unpopular film is something new members occasionally attempt, but in the interest of this not turning into just another pile-on by the regulars, how about giving us more than what online critics said? We want the Paranoid Knight 2008 defense of the film! What specifically about the film was well-written? Why do you respond so strongly in favor of the moments you've singled out? Is there an approach you took to the film that other critics and viewers didn't utilize, and did this help you "get" the movie? As you realize, this film is mostly known as a punchline. If you want to rechristen it as an overlooked gem, give us something more substantial to hang your arguments on other than that you liked it

[paranoid-knight2008]

I really feel that when the film was released, it became this so-called punchline because of the celebrity status of its two stars at that moment in time. Remember, Affleck and Lopez were basically like "Brangelina" is nowadays.

"Gigli" has many pros and some cons. However, the good (and sometimes great things) of the film completely outweigh the films lesser moments. There are a few lines and moments that are bad. There is the point that the film falls kinda flat (mainly in the film's last 20 minutes), and then there is the first 10 minutes which holds a very major, stupid flaw.

But as soon as Lopez's character shows up, the film catches its foot and becomes quite a nice character study. Director Martin Brest sets the film almost entirely in an apartment, and uses this breed of isolation to give the film some edge. Many critics said this was a flaw, but really, its quite daring. Especially for a Hollywood-produced picture. The dialogue is also very daring. There are some moments that are completely wonderful. Take, for example, a scene in which Larry (Affleck) and Ricki (Lopez) explain their reasons for being straight/gay. The dialogue isn't a bit realistic, no. But the actors make it seem like it is. And every line delivered here is amazingly crucial to figuring out what the film is really about. It's about sexuality and the social outlook on it.

Another scene that is quite nice is the film's highlight sex scene. "Are you gay?" Ricki asks. And while Larry denies it, she seduces him into sex with some pretty "vile" dialogue. A line that is seen as a major joke, is wrongly seen as terrible. "It's turkey time," Ricki says. "Gobble gobble." And follows that up with: "I thought you wanted to be my bitch." It is dialogue like this in the film that makes it what it is. A truthful, daring, and sometimes self-satirizing examination of masculinity and femininity. Sexual design isn't always as erotic and sensual as portrayed in most of Hollywood's films. Sex is apart of life, and the film is blunt and brilliant in its depictions of that.

Since I know you, Domino, haven't seen the film. I would like to leave a lot of the film's other moments under wraps. But I promise, while seemingly random: they all add up to a certain wonderful level of existentialism and in this case – in the meditation of human sexuality.

While the last 20 minutes of “Gigli” falls a bit flat, the film's point is still loud and clear. And everything makes sense. That thin line has been examined. The screenplay is far from dumb. It knows what its doing and knows what it wants to say. And that is some of the few points in “Gigli” that made me see it as a vastly underrated, and purely underrated little film.

Something tells me, had it been an independent film – it may have received a much better reception. But that doesn't matter – because as is - “Gigli” has many, many merits and is far far far from the worst film ever made.

[paranoid-knight2008]

Well, something's got to replace the canceled Ran.

Ran was cancelled?

Here are two scenes from GIGLI that I think are both well-written and completely relative to how I feel about the film. (As stated above.)

[HerrSchreck]

Hey, who ordered Gigli?

[Antoine Doinel]

Hey, who ordered Gigli?

Already being discussed here.

[HerrSchreck]

Yeah, but discussion of the Gigli angle belongs here since we're discussing the alleged Arch-Badness of the film that the article's title is echoing. I thought it was funny the guy chose Gigli --out of all the other films in the universe-- to hypothetically rift up a relationship.

[colinr0380]

The impression I got from the old a_film_by posts on the film was that it was surely a product of an "auteur mindset" but that wasn't enough to prevent its total failure on every other level! I suppose that analysis is not too surprising since it seems that the biggest critical failures come about when an 'auteurist' director or actor who has received some praise for previous works gets carried away with themselves in trying to create something which surpasses their previous work or aims at some kind of significance as if to prove that they were not a one hit wonder.

On the other hand sometimes the critical balance gets out of alignment - for example Martin Brest, after making Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run was horrendously overpraised for the just as gimmicky and overplayed Scent of a Woman, and I get the impression that his following films were attempts by embarrassed critics to atone for their previous mistakes by being overly negative. Meet Joe Black and Gigli, while flawed and in some ways undramatic (in that they are just lay there inert with nothing original or interesting going on and no chemistry between the stars. In Meet Joe Black's case for 180 tedious minutes) are not horrifically bad.

In fact I specifically sat down to watch Giggly with the expectations that this would be the ne plus ultra of bad films - after all it features a lunkhead contract killer constantly hitting on and trying to turn his lesbian partner while they babysit a kidnapped mentally impaired manchild with a breast obsession while waiting for orders of whether to kill him or not. Just the premise had the potential to be deliriously awful, insulting and embarassing to watch, but the film somehow managed to craft something utterly bland from its material. It struck me that the film actually seems to be trying to take its premise seriously, especially with the turn into mawkish sentimentality and the possibility of a love affair at the end which perhaps is the one thing that results in it seeming more patronising and insulting to the mentally challenged and lesbians! I'm sure hitmen may not have been too flattered about the portrayal of their profession either! It feels as if it is trying to be more of a buddy thriller type film set in a real world which contains comedic elements (in the vein of Midnight Run) than an outrageous and ludicrous bad taste comedy, which is the only way I could see this material working.

Sure, the Pacino cameo moves a little in the direction of glorious over the top fun but it is only one scene to push the characters into the embarrassing (but not embarrassing enough to be truly great!) final act of releasing their charge back into the wild, letting him wander into a fantasy world of gorgeous and fully developed beach babes.

The whole film just seems tonally wrong. A missed opportunity to make a great 'bad film' to be talked about in hushed whispers and at the same time an insane choice of material for a straight thriller. Take the J-Lo working out scene - successfully played it could have shown the character as sexy and defiant; embarassingly badly played it could still have retained some camp/must see quality. Either way it would have made J-Lo's film career. Yet instead of becoming the next Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls, she just goes through the motions of that scene like an automated workout robot, reading her lines mechanically as she grinds her hips in the direction of Ben-Aff. It is neither good nor excruciatingly bad enough to be memorable.

In the end that scene is the film in a nutshell. It turns out to be the worst thing a film can be - neither bad or good, just nothing special and barely memorable (and if you want a grandstanding Pacino oration you can take your pick of any number of better films, from Scarface to the final speech in The Devil's Advocate!)

[paranoid-knight2008]

But I found what you found neither good or bad to be good.

But that doesnt really matter. Haha. I just wish there was more who actually see the film before making assumptions on it. I mean, I was one of them that did that....

[AWA]

I haven't seen this but a friend has and hated it... he also told me that (apparently) the filmmakers were so incompetent that, despite the fact the story is set in Chicago, they show the TORONTO skyline (which is where the film, like many Hollywood productions, was made)... which obviously has some distinguishing features like, I don't know, the CN TOWER!
That would be like showing the Paris skyline and saying the film is supposed to be in London.

[Antoine Doinel]

That's just a sign of really poor continuity work. It actually happens far more often, even in much better films, than you think. The most glaring example are red Canadian mailboxes that pop up in films that are supposed to set in American cities.

[colinr0380]

But I found what you found neither good or bad to be good.

But that doesnt really matter. Haha. I just wish there was more who actually see the film before making assumptions on it. I mean, I was one of them that did that....

If you got something out of the film that is an important criteria to judge the films success or failure by (I have films that I'm fond of that just do not 'work' as films or are flawed, but I still enjoy them, perhaps even because of their flaws which make them stand out. You might like a film a lot while at the same time realising that it may compare badly to other, similar films - the definition of a 'guilty pleasure'). One of the things I like most about film is the way that lots of different people can see exactly the same piece of work and respond to it differently!

[AWA]

That's just a sign of really poor continuity work. It actually happens far more often, even in much better films, than you think. The most glaring example are red Canadian mailboxes that pop up in films that are supposed to set in American cities.

Yes, but red mailboxes is a small detail - showing the CN Tower in broad view and trying to say it's Chicago is like showing the Eiffel Tower and saying "well, here we are in Barcelona...." That's not a mailbox or some detail, that's a HUGE, massively dumb mistake.

And I live in Canada and have two different mailboxes and neither one of them is red. ?

[HerrSchreck]

hafta agree. This goes just a touch beyond mild continuity error-- it's a whopper of fullest scale.

[Mr Sausage]

That's just a sign of really poor continuity work. It actually happens far more often, even in much better films, than you think. The most glaring example are red Canadian mailboxes that pop up in films that are supposed to set in American cities.

Yes, but red mailboxes is a small detail - showing the CN Tower in broad view and trying to say it's Chicago is like showing the Eiffel Tower and saying "well, here we are in Barcelona...." That's not a mailbox or some detail, that's a HUGE, massively dumb mistake.

And I live in Canada and have two different mailboxes and neither one of them is red. ?

I believe he means the post-office boxes you deposit your letters in.

[AWA]

That's just a sign of really poor continuity work. It actually happens far more often, even in much better films, than you think. The most glaring example are red Canadian mailboxes that pop up in films that are supposed to set in American cities.

Yes, but red mailboxes is a small detail - showing the CN Tower in broad view and trying to say it's Chicago is like showing the Eiffel Tower and saying "well, here we are in Barcelona...." That's not a mailbox or some detail, that's a HUGE, massively dumb mistake.

And I live in Canada and have two different mailboxes and neither one of them is red. ?

I believe he means the post-office boxes you deposit your letters in.

Oh yeah! Duh...

[oldsheperd]

Well I agree that there are plenty of errors in really good films concerning location.
The part in "No Country for Old Men" where Tommy Lee Jones pulls up to the motel right as soon as the truck carrying the Mexicans pull out of the parking lot shows both a Long John Silver's and I believe a Carls' Jr. sign. The signs for these two establishment were vastly different in the early eighties. Maybe I'm just nit-picking but I reckon it would give me a good chance to say that that part was filmed right down the street from the gun store my Pops works at.

[paranoid-knight2008]

I haven't seen this but a friend has and hated it... he also told me that (apparently) the filmmakers were so incompetent that, despite the fact the story is set in Chicago, they show the TORONTO skyline (which is where the film, like many Hollywood productions, was made)... which obviously has some distinguishing features like, I don't know, the CN TOWER!
That would be like showing the Paris skyline and saying the film is supposed to be in London.

Funny you say the film is supposed to be set in Chicago when it is even mentioned in the film that they are in Los Angeles and next to the Pacific border. =D>

And where is the supposed CN Tower? Didn't see it anywhere in the film...!

[Cde.]

I haven't seen this but a friend has and hated it... he also told me that (apparently) the filmmakers were so incompetent that, despite the fact the story is set in Chicago, they show the TORONTO skyline (which is where the film, like many Hollywood productions, was made)... which obviously has some distinguishing features like, I don't know, the CN TOWER!
That would be like showing the Paris skyline and saying the film is supposed to be in London.

I haven't seen the film, so I can't comment on the worth of this complaint, but it's sort of proving paranoid-knight's point when he starts a thread claiming this as an undervalued film, asking people to give it a chance and see it for themselves...and one of the replies basically says "my friend says it sucks" and laughs at it based on an alleged flaw picked up on by someone else.