Film Reviews

Gigli

• Rating:
• Director: Martin Brest.
• Starring: Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bartha, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Lannie Kazan.
• Details: US / 120 mins / (15PG).

No point in messing about: Is 'Gigli' the worst movie ever made? No, it's not. But it does have a claim to being one of the most misguided and pointless in recent living memory, a twin headed exercise in vanity for its overpaid stars. The lunkhead who trades under the name Ben Affleck plays the titular character, a low level mob enforcer who kidnaps the mentally handicapped Brian (Bartha), who happens to be the young brother of a federal prosecutor making life very difficult for the head of Gigli's crime family. (What they hope to achieve with this is never quite made clear.) Anyways, since he's such a bona fida moron, Gigli's superior believes that he could easily muck up the job, and thus hires another contractor, Ricki (Lopez) to make sure things go according to plan. Needless to say, once our boy lays his eyes on this weapon of ass destruction, he falls hopelessly in lust. Thing is - and here's the film's pivotal 'gag' - Ricki is a lesbian, and pretty much spends the entire film singing the praises of her vagina. Seriously. Although written and directed by the usually capable, if hardly spectacular, Martin Brest (Scent of a Woman), 'Gigli's incompetence when it comes to a fluid structured narrative, decent dialogue and formed characters can mercifully be described as hopelessly inadequate. Borderline offensive for its depiction of mental illness, homosexuality and Jennifer Lopez, 'Gigli' lacks a single cohesive idea, content to trundle endless along in a ramshackle fashion, lacking even the second-hand wit of its influences. According to press reports, it now appears that Affleck and Lopez have called off their much heralded nuptials. Personally I feel saddened by this news, for on the evidence of 'Gigli', they deserve each other.

Review by Garreth Murphy