Date Movie Was Worse

Gigli. Rhymes with "really." As in "really sucks."
So Gigli popped up on primetime TV last night, probably because the cheap-asses at TVNZ wouldn't have had to pay much to screen it and not everyone in the population had (as yet) heard how bad it is. They'll know all too well now. Anyways, I watched it because I felt that, as a movie buff, it was my duty to see what all the negative fuss was all about.

I'm going to be honest here. This movie doesn't really stand out as being that much worse than your typical bad Hollywood movie so as to deserve to be singled out as "the worst movie ever" by so many - the fact that the movie featured the infamous pairing of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez is probably the main thing that elevated it from typical-crapness to a level of notoriety. I have seen worse. Kind of. Date Movie comes to mind, because that was thoroughly unbearable.

On the plus side, Gigli is coherent, which is more than I could say for Advent Children or The Ring Two. Also, it features Christopher Walken making one of the most pointless cameos ever as a detective of some sort (I like crazy shit like that, and as I'm scraping at the bottom of the barrell this scene is considered a "plus").

Walken's character:
"Man, you know what I'd love to do right now? Go down to Marie Callender's, get me a big bowl - pie, some ice cream on it, mmm-hmm good! Put some on your head! Your tongue would slap your brains out trying to get to it! INTERESTED? SURE?"















More good stuff: At one point we see the blown-out brains of a criminal drip into a fish tank and then a fish swims up and eats bloody brain matter. That was quite cool. Oh and Al Pacino is fucking awesome in his... one scene. Basically, like Walken, he bursts into the movie quite suddenly and randomly and is never seen again. But he makes an impact. He comes in, yells at everyone, shoots the guy I mentioned (the guy whose brain-bits get eaten by fish) and acts all smart and cocky and confident and yells at Bennifer. That was sooooo the highlight of this movie.

Wow, I managed to drag out 2-and-a-bit whole paragraphs of "good things" from this movie. Quite a feat. Now for the negative.

For starters, back to the Pacino scene, the situation for Bennifer is defused awfully. All of a sudden J-Lo steps in and unconvincingly (both in what she says and the way she delivers it) "convinces" Pacino that she and Asslick did the right thing, and that Pacino needs them to clean up the mess of the situation. She doesn't do enough to convince him. Yet he's "convinced." Gee. Close call.

The big problem: This movie is a film in which nothing happens. It tries to be a relationship film about Asslick and his big-assed lesbian partner-in-crime. Some movies work well despite nothing happening because there's good material driving the characters etc. to make the film work on a different dynamic to your typical plot-driven drivel. In Gigli, not only does nothing happen, but the elements driving it - the relationship stuff - are pathetic, rendering the entire thing boring. The dialogue is laughably bad. The chemistry is non-existent. In fact, as an extension of that last point, not only do the characters not work as a duo but neither Asslick nor J-Lo (both with the help of the god-awful script) make their characters bearable as individuals away from each other. Boring boring boring stuff.

Ben Asslick as Gigli:
"If by some fuckin' miracle long shot you haven't heard of my reputation let me tell you who the fuck I am! I am the fuckin' Sultan of Slick, Sadie! I am the rule of fuckin' cool! You wanna be a gangster? You wanna be a thug? You sit at my fuckin' feet and gather the pearls that emanate forth from me! Because I'm the fuckin' original, straight-first-foremost, pimp-mack, fuckin hustler, original gangster's gangster!"

Oh dear god.

This movie gets a strong D- or 0.5 out of 5. How does it rise that much above an "F"? For one thing, "D" movies like Madagascar and The Longest Yard aren't much better. Add to that: Al Pacino, the fact that I was able to watch it without switching it off, and the so-bad-it's-good factor (see Ben Asslick quote for evidence of that last one). "So bad it's good" movies get a "D-" by default because they have that redeeming element of enjoyable-watchability to them, and as such are better than Date Movie-esque complete failures.

Retard character:
"She's like the ones at the Baywatch. They make my penis sneeze."
Ben Asslick as Gigli:
"You got a good sense of humor, you know that?"
Retard character:
"God bless you."
Ben Asslick as Gigli:
"Thank you."
Retard character:
"No, not you, stupid. When my penis sneezes, I say, 'God bless you'... God bless you, penis."

You have to see this movie to believe it.

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