Gigli -- 2003 -- R

Ok, I succumbed to temptation and watched this film that managed to sweep the Razzie awards (The Razzie Awards, for those who don't know, are the "Oscars" for the worst categories of the year). What I found was a mixture of things that were good and things that were bad. The trouble came when the bad outweighed the good.

The plot involves a mobster of some sort named Gigli (played by Ben Affleck) who is hired to kidnap the mentally challenged brother, Brian, of a big time prosecutor in order to get a buddy of the mobster's boss off the hook. He is joined by a lesbian hitman named Ricky (hit-woman?, played by Jennifer Lopez) whose mission is to make sure Gigli doesn't screw up. Yup, that's her whole reason to be there. So they kidnap this guy and keep him for awhile. As we move through this plot, we get little side stuff that goes on which further serves to develop these two characters, but really doesn't forward what plot there is much.

So let's start positive. Whatever its faults, the film had some good character development. It couldn't really help that, since it's 2 hours long and centered around 3 characters. By far, the best character is Brian whose character is built solely through his own actions and comes across as innocent and endearing. His own ending is perfect for him, and makes me wish the story were more about him than the actual leads. The other two are developed, bizarre as they are and weirdly as it was done.

I am not sure how it pulled this off, but although many of the scenes were very, very slow, the pacing wasn't that bad. I gauge pacing on how often I check the time on the movie to see when it will end, and I didn't glance up until over an hour had gone by. I was probably lost in the mess. However, this does indicate the director knew what he was doing, and the quality of the images goes along with this. Then again, this is the guy who directed Scent of a Woman, Beverly Hills Cop, and Meet Joe Black, so he's not exactly an amateur.

The single biggest problem with this film in my opinion has to do with the dialogue. We didn't start well with an apparent "f" word quota in the opening scenes. This quota diminished as the movie wore onward until the end had no profanity at all. The dialogue based scene went on and on and on and on, and although I know a cardinal rule of dialogue is "never be direct," you've got to at least make sense and forward the plot. The dialogue here was just a big mess, and all I wanted out of a lot of the scenes was just to get to the point and let the story go onward.

And let's be serious...Jennifer Lopez as a lesbian. At the time this movie came out Ben and Jen were breaking a rule of movie making when they were seriously dating (I believe engaged) and making this film. Since they were so public about it, a good deal of the audience was aware that the two leads were in a relationship, and we're supposed to accept that she's gay? Bad move. Most of the time, what stars do in their private lives I could care less about, but this time, it hurt this film. They have this incredibly long scene where Gigli talks about why men are the pinnacle of sexual desire and Ricky counters with why women are. While on some levels the argument was interesting, it really didn't do anything for the film or the story in my opinion.

Some of the scene issues may have resulted from the film being written and directed by the same person. Some people can handle putting their material on the chopping block and hacking away, but this one apparently can't. This movie was about a half hour too long. Almost every scene needed to be condensed or cut down in some way. The dialogue needed to be refined into something more streamlined and (sorry to say) more to the point than the ramblings we got here. Some people are too concise with their dialogue, but this one needed to be more concise with it.

We had several side stories & characters pop in and out which served to build on the characters, but we could have done without most of them to further shorten this film. If it had been tightened up and had a different female lead we could better accept as a lesbian, the film might have been a lot better.

However, in my humble opinion, the lesbian angle on Ricky was mostly pointless and only served as a plot device to create sexual tension between her and Gigli. If they wanted Lopez, a better tension device could have been found to make her unattainable until she decided to be so. This would have upped the believability of the film just a little bit.

In the end, it's works as a model of good filmmaking gone terribly wrong in many, many ways. Let us pray this film can be used as a learning device to show future generations what not to do when they try to make their own masterpieces.