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At The Movies: 'Gigli'
Wednesday, July 30
You could mistake Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez for many things - actors, models, mannequins. But "Gigli" asks us to accept Hollywood's over-exposed glamour couple as a pair of killers for hire. They're nice killers, to be sure - funny, pretty, shiny assassins who quickly find it in their hearts to save a retarded teen from themselves. But c'mon: Would you run from Ben and J. Lo, or would you ask where they got their shoes?

"Gigli" is at war with itself, and no one wins. It's a kids movie for easy-to-please adults, a fluffy, meet-cute romance that manages to incorporate J. Lo's own vagina monologue, a lovable retarded kid, a brutal murder, and an Affleck performance that actually makes you feel sorry for the guy. Experimental garage bands don't get this atonal.

Affleck plays Larry Gigli (rhymes with really, as in really bad), an L.A. hood assigned to kidnap a federal prosecutor's son (or, as he is called several times in the movie, "the retahd"). Mission accomplished. Then comes Ricki (Lopez), another hood sent to make sure that Larry gets the job done. Larry has the hots for Ricki, but Ricki explains that she's a lesbian, which leads to shenanigans of frustrated sexual desire. Oh, the places we will go.

Anyway, Ben and J. Lo - er, Larry and Ricki - take a liking to the kid, which makes sense, because he comes straight from Hollywood central casting for lovable "retahds." So they must find a way to save the kid, whose thumb they're supposed to chop off, without angering their boss, Louis (Lenny Venito).

Venito is the best thing in the film, which should not be taken as a high compliment. He has a Cagney-like sense of belligerence and coiled danger. Affleck, meanwhile, plays Affleck, which is his most reliable role. He looks and sounds like a pretty boy doing impressions of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino (the latter shows up near the end of the film and yells a lot, which has become something of a Pacino trademark in recent years).

Once you get past the staggering question of who gave this thing the green light, "Gigli" actually turns into a uniquely bad movie that yields real (albeit unintentional) laughter. Writer/director Martin Brest has conjured one of the most momentum-averse movies in recent years, with moments of pure randomness that send the mind reeling. Christopher Walken wanders in to give his one-scene seal of approval as a cop who talks really slow. Lainie Kazan appears as Larry's mom, who reminds Larry that lesbians can be good fun, too. (Thanks, Ma).

But the signature sequence of vanity run amok comes when J. Lo schools Ben on why a woman's private parts are better than a man's. Executing yoga maneuvers in a skimpy outfit that accentuates her much-photographed caboose, she reduces Ben to a drooling, smirking, sneering mess. On the bright side, this also gets him to shut up. Then the music swells, and we're back to the kid's "Rain Man" refrain of wanting to check out "Baywatch." Good call, kid. It's gotta be better than this.

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GIGLI

Grade: D

Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Lenny Venito, Justin Bartha, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Lainie Kazan. Directed by Martin Brest. Rated R (language, sexual content, violence). In wide release. 115 min.

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(c) 2003, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.