CHAOTIC NOT RANDOM TOUGH QUESTION CORNER

GIGLI: IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Yes, it's that bad. It's worse than that, actually. It is the worst movie I've ever seen. Well, kind of. There are worse movies made every year, the kind with names like Zombies Invade Akron 4 that get cranked out in three days and shown on cable at 2:00 a.m. But Gigli is the worst major motion picture I've ever seen that was produced on a decent budget ($54 million, in this case) and made by people who ought to know better.

That's not a snap judgement. After watching Gigli on Thanksgiving evening, G-Dog and I debated its lack of merit versus Wild Wild West, previously the worst movie either one of us had seen. G-Dog reasoned that Gigli was the worse movie because while both movies had hot chicks, Salma Hayek is hotter than Jennifer Lopez and less annoying to boot. Also, Gigli had no answer for Wild Wild West's big mechanical steam-powered fire-belching spider. I wasn't so sure, but after a night's sleep I agreed that Gigli's special blend of idiot dialogue and total lack of believability had found a new low in my personal film viewing history.

At no point while watching Gigli will you believe that you are watching a male gangster and a lesbian gangster collaborating on a kidnapping and falling in love. You will believe that you are watching two pretty but not-so-talented actors fumble through an awful script that asks the viewer to buy into one impossible situation after another. For example, the movie begins with Larry (Ben Affleck) kidnapping Brian, the retarded younger brother of a federal prosecutor. After luring Brian out of his group home, Larry drives him to his apartment, where Brian sleeps on the couch and gets three square meals a day. I'm not a gangster, and I don't know any gangsters, but I'm pretty sure kidnapping victims are more likely to get gagged and bound and dumped in the basement of an abandoned warehouse than they are to hang around a tastefully appointed apartment, roaming free and watching television. Pretty soon Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) shows up. We're supposed to think she's intelligent and spiritually centered because she reads Eastern philosophy, and we're supposed to admire her confidence and nonviolent conflict resolution skills in contrast to the macho, blustering Larry. We don't, though, because really she's just irritating and smug. And somehow, Jennifer Lopez is even less convincing a gangster than Ben Affleck. What's next? A crime thriller starring Wilford Brimley and Judi Dench as deranged serial killers?

After a while, Larry and Ricki get orders to cut off Brian's thumb and mail it to his brother. Now, I'm not endorsing the act of hacking off thumbs, but if you're in the gangland kidnapping business, I think it's part of the job description. It's the gangster version of TPS reports. But neither Larry nor Ricki can bring themselves to do it, because Brian's not an icky retard who drools and has grand mal seizures on the toilet -- he's a charming movie retard who does silly Sir Mix-A-Lot impressions. Anyway, Larry and Ricki wuss out by sneaking into a morgue and cutting a thumb off a corpse, establishing themselves as the Least Authentic Movie Gangsters Ever.

Gigli contains a lot of bad dialogue, but the worst comes during an excruciating debate between Larry and Ricki about the relative merits of the penis and the vagina. Ricki delivers a turgid monologue defending the sexual utility of the vagina while wearing a tight, skimpy outfit and executing a series of yoga poses. The scene is supposed to be tensely erotic, but it's about as sexy as masturbating with sand. What a stupid debate, anyway. Either you like dick or you like puss (or both), and no amount of rational wordplay going to change your preference. You may as well try to use rhetoric and argument to convince someone they like rocky road ice cream better than cookies 'n' cream.

I hope I'm not spoiling the surprise when I tell you that Larry and Ricki have sex, an act that Ricki kicks off by saying, "Turkey time," and "Gobble gobble," and demanding that Larry give her "some of that hetero-lingus." This happens after Ricki's lesbian lover drops by Larry's place, throws a jealous tantrum, and slashes her wrists with a carving knife. I hate to play the PC card, but for all its surface tolerance of homosexuality, Gigli has a hard "lesbians are crazy bitches who really want cock" edge. Can we all take a vote and agree that Ben Affleck should stop making lesbo-conversion movies? (See also Chasing Amy.) When do we get to see the movie where Ben Affleck gets converted to a bottom boy by the wily charms of a San Francisco male nurse?

There's lots more badness in Gigli worth busting on, like the wince-inducing cameos by Christopher Walken and Al Pacino, or Ricki and Larry's mom sharing rug-munching stories, or Brian spitting "Baby Got Back." But it's my bedtime.

+posted by Lawrence @ 12/02/2004 11:56:00 PM