Pyul MacTackle suffers, braves and endures B. Lo's GIGLI...

Harry here... had laundry to do tonight, so I didn't make Gigli... Pyul didn't have laundry. He went. I'm sorry...

Hey Harry,  

Pyul Mactackle again with another mess of a movie that I haven't seen much coverage of on the site, Gigli, so I thought I might drop you my thoughts.  

This movie has simply made my head spin and given me a headache of confusion that just absolutely refuses to go away. And I feel bad, really bad, for the marketing department that was saddled with this mess and will most likely suffer a few losses when this thing tanks itself offshore without having ever made it to port.  

You see Gigli is this years great 'What if' comedy. It essentially ponders 'What if a studio put out a film that, rather than targeting almost everyone in the audience by including something that would lure both men AND women to see it, instead targeted absolutely no one by including things that insure that NOBODY will like it?' As a film, Gigli isn't marketed to anyone. ANYONE. Okay, so maybe it could have been marketed to me and a handful of people like me that would have walked out thinking it was kind of cute. Instead, they went for the big dollars, which is going to bring some very negative vibes everytime the Revolution Studios logo rears it's ugly head before a film. At least until they pop out a winner.  

Right now, right this minute, watch the trailer. Right here click  Come on, you've already invested this much time in this review, you can invest 2 more minutes. Trust me.  

Okay, did you watch it? Good. That's the only time you're gonna see that movie. You could pay to see Gigli and STILL you wouldn't see what that trailer promised you. Oh, sure, you'll see some of those scenes. But you won't see that movie. In fact, the first few scenes in that trailer (The talk with the Mom, Affleck "Mobster Strolling" in a jumpsuit to a car like he was Giovanni Ribisi in "The Gift") aren't even in the movie. These are scenes obviously cut during the extensive work done on this film to try and make it releasable. And well, I hate to say it, but all that work, every last bit of it, is wasted. This film simply must have been a conceptual nightmare from inception.  

After all, it's a Romantic Comedy for men.  

You read that right. It's a romantic comedy for men. Only it's constructed in the same fashion as you would a feminine romantic comedy with all the blood and gore of a halfway decent mobster film. Yeah, you read that right as well.  

And what's really frustrating is that the movie isn't BAD. In fact, there are several things to really like about this movie. Ben Affleck actually gives a great performance as a MOOK. He plays a mook perfectly. His accent works and there's not a single moment that you don't believe that he's an unintelligent, greasy, loser hitman. The film opens with him on a job and you don't doubt for a second that he's ready to kill this guy. It's a good solid opening and a true Martin Brest scene mixing both hardened criminal behavior with the appropriate amount of whimsy. Jennifer Lopez actually comes across as sexy, something I don't normally find her, and remains alluring through the entire film.  

Then there's Justin Bartha in his first film. Now I know absolutely nothing about this kid and he has a shorter IMDB profile than most extra's, so I don't know whether or not he's actually retarded or to what capacity he is actually a functioning human being. What I do know is that despite hitting all the cliches of the heavily retarded individual (which arguably while feeling done to death, lets face it, there really are people like the characters people always compare the mentally handicapped performances to, namely Dustin Hoffman and Sean Penn) he is convincing every step of the way. This kid does a really good job, which is very depressing in a way because this film is about get shit on by an unbelievable amount of people.  

But what really shines in this film are the single scene performances by Christopher Walken (playing Columbo by way of Walken) and Al Pacino (as a pony tailed gangster that would normally be played by Ron Silver...by way of Pacino). No, neither of these guys are doing anything new here, but new isn't what you want from Walken and Pacino walk-ons. You want Walken and Pacino. And here you get PERFECT Walken and Pacino. No matter how much you despise this movie, it is impossible to be a film geek and not smile through these scenes. The scene with Pacino in particular is completely PERFECT. It is the centerpiece of this film, and had this been a mobster movie at heart, it would be a scene that people would bring up in conversations for quite some time.  

And herein lies the biggest problem with the film. It's not really a mobster movie either. And this scene, this perfect scene, DOESN'T BELONG IN THIS FUCKING MOVIE! Not because it's too good for it or anything like that. But becuase this movie wants to sit on the fence and be the perfect movie that both men and women can like and instead fails miserably on both counts. But to go any further requires spoilers out the ass, so consider yourself warned.  

Spoilers  

Okay, here's the first big lie of the trailer. Jennifer Lopez's character, who is presented in the trailer as unavailable, actually is unavailable. No, she's not a mobster's girlfriend or anything like that. That would actually be a movie worth seeing. No, Jennifer Lopez's charecter is a lesbian. Stone cold gay. But don't worry, as we all know (and the trailer shows us) Ben Affleck's been down that road before and has the cure for that particular problem. Now the idea of of a lesbian character isn't a problem and actually would have worked if the attraction was a one way thing. But it's not. Affleck gets the girl. And from athematic standpoint there's no reason for him to. Why would a women, who is obsessed with the feminine and is very butch herself (despite being a lipstick lesbian) fall for someone who happens to be a posturing ball of machismo and hair grease. Man, this film is gonna piss off a shitload of lesbians. Several people got up and left, seriously, they stood up and left, the moment, the very moment, that this fact was revealed. I knew this surprise going in, so when it happened I watched for audience reaction and was astounded at the number of walk outs. I thought: Oh, they'll come back. They didn't.  

But that's just the beginning of Gigli's problems. Problem number two is the R rating, which is a three-fold problem.  

Rated R Issue One: Teenage girls can't get in to see it, cutting out a huge portion of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez's audience. Not to mention the repeat business audience that romantic comedies usually get.  

Rated R Issue Two: It's an rated R film that possesses not a spot of nudity. Yeah, Revolution, good luck with that. Now I know how actresses can be about that sometimes, but had this had even just a wee bit of Lopez nudity, well, the odds would have been pretty good that guys would have paid to see it and enjoyed it for the nudity and mob aspects of the film. It's a sad statement to make, but it's a true one. Sensual fully clothed love scenes do not sell to men. So men and teenaged girls are out...that leaves women. Which brings us to:  

Rated R Issue Three: The amount of gore in this film. While certainly not enough gore to bother action fans or turn on gore hounds enough to watch this more than once, it has more gore than the average middle American female audience can handle. three scenes in particular simply kill this film for average female audiences. First of all, one of Lopez's psycho stalker ex-girlfriends shows up, freaks out that she's staying with a man and slices open her wrists for all to see. Not too bloody, but enough to freak out the sqeemish. Then, if that weren't enough, we get a scene in which Affleck tries to saw a thumb off a corpse with a plastic knife. He succeeds and it's not all together too gory, but the incessant sawing of plastic on bone is gonna drive some audience members right out of the theater. And then there's the coup de grace. That perfect Pacino scene I mentioned earlier. This scene gives gore fans something to really enjoy. Al pacino blows somebody's head off with a wonderful spray of blood and brains that blows back onto (and into) and aquarium. Then we get a closeup of the aquarium as the fish rush up and devour the little bits of brain that are sinking into the tank. Yeah, that's gonna play to middle america. Personally, I thought it was a nice touch, and is really the best bit of originality in the movie. Unfortunately, it only serves to further alienate itself from it's chief audience: women.  

And to top it all off, despite all the dark aspects of the film, Affleck and Lopez drive off into the sunset together. I shit you not. It all ends 'perfectly', which is absolutely how a movie like this SHOULDN'T end.  

END SPOILERS  

All in all, Gigli has too much edge for the romantic sodomy it's marketing itself as and way too much romantic sodomy for the edge the film is trying to achieve. This sent me out of theatre with with a "what the fuck were they thinking vibe" only recently achieved by Pluto Nash when I wondered "Who in the hell would greenlight a $90 million anything that had Randy Quaid as a goofball robot sidekick?" This movie is a failure of Epic proportions, if only so because there is so much that is wasted here. All that great Martin Brest edginess would have made for a much better Martin Brest mobster comedy. And all that romantic comdey material...well its all been done before, and much better, in Chasing Amy. Luckily, this movie is going to die a bitter death this weekend, as it goes up against another Rated R comedy, American Wedding, which is going to syphon off a large chunk of the crowd that would have paid to see this. Part of me thinks, and really, wants to believe the marketing department at Sony did this on purpose, if only to have a REALLY GOOD excuse why the movie bombed opening weekend. "What could we do? It went up against an American Pie movie."  

Can you say Pink Slip?  

Pyul Mactackle

and here's Mean Mr Mustard who violently despises, loathes and hates Gigli...