It's anti-Italian discrimination!
Gigli is what my mother would call a stronzo
Movie: Gigli
Main Cast: Ben Affleck (Larry Gigli), Jennifer Lopez (Ricki), Justin Bartha (Brian)
‘Worst Movie’ Nominations in 2003: Cat in the Hat, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, From Justin to Kelly, The Real Cancun, Gigli
Official Synopsis: Hitman Larry Gigli is asked by Louis to kidnap the mentally ill brother of an influential federal prosecutor. Unsure of whether he will do the job diligently, Louis hires Ricki to track Larry.
My Synopsis: Large Italian doofus kidnaps a young man for a job but his boss calls in a woman to make sure the job actually gets done.
-
Ho boy. HO BOY. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BOY.
Where does one even start with Gigli. Perhaps that it has the audacity to be two hours long? Or maybe that I almost had to spend $3.99 to rent it on YouTube because I couldn’t even find it to stream illegally?
This movie is so bad that it isn’t even hosted on streaming sites anymore. Thankfully as a gay person who grew up in a Catholic household, I know where to go on the internet to find forbidden content.
Halfway through this movie, I found myself angrily searching “how did Gigli get made.” Unfortunately no firm answer exists, but I’m going to hypothesize that a lot of people owed a lot of favours to other people. What I did find, to my extreme disappointment, was that this movie was written and directed by Martin Brest, the man who brought us Meet Joe Black and Beverly Hills Cop - two movies that have moved me both sexually and comically.
Gigli, however, is a story for nobody. There is no audience for this movie.
Operating at the lowest possible tier for the Los Angeles mafia, Larry Gigli (“rhymes with really”) struts around wearing bowling shirts and is incapable of doing his job properly. Despite his boss’ clear lack of faith in him, he still picks Larry to kidnap Brian, the “psychologically challenged '' younger brother of a problematic lawyer.
This story, and these characters, are clearly ripped off of other, better movies and television shows.
Larry, with his awful, unplaceable accent and flowing button-ups, is a very poor copy of Tony Soprano. Brian, who is obsessed with Baywatch and rap music, is an offensive ripoff of Arnie from ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’. The plot is trying to be a Scorsese mob movie mixed with Tarantino unpredictability and Nora Ephron romance. None of it works because Ben Affleck and Justin Bartha have the acting range of a pair of wet socks.
Because Larry is such a dolt, his boss also brings in lesbian killer for hire Ricki (just typing the words makes me horny). Her job is to watch over both men and ensure things go smoothly. Did someone say gender roles?!?!?!?
So much of this movie revolves around Larry and Ricki and their zero chemistry relationship that the plot moves at a snail's pace. I can’t tell if Affleck and Lopez were brought on to Gigli because they were the only two willing to do it, or they happily took these roles because they thought they were the only ones who could do it.
It takes over an hour and a half for any instructions regarding Brian to come through and in the time before that, you’re forced to listen to Larry spout his caveman theories about why men are at the top of the sexual pyramid (hahahahhahahahahahha) and why all women love dicks (ahahahahahhahahahahahahahhaaha). Thankfully, there is an accompanying scene where Ricki explains the beauty of the vagina while doing moonlit yoga which is downloaded into my brain forever.
This movie is offensive to me as a gay and an Italian (and a breathing human being), and I’m still trying to decide which was worse: that Larry calls Ricki a “stone cold dyke-a-saurus-rexi”, or that this movie thinks that all Italian people scream “No who the fuck is THIS?!” when we can’t figure out who’s on the phone.
For reasons I can’t fathom (see: favours) Christopher Walken and Al Pacino agreed to be in this movie. Walken plays a suspicious cop who shows up at Larry’s apartment to get dirt on who might’ve taken Brian (and then is never seen again). Larry gives away nothing and Walken then asks them to go for ice cream in one of the most out of place, deranged scenes I’ve ever seen.
Al Pacino turns out to be the mastermind (this is a guess) who orchestrated the whole kidnapping. When he finds out that Larry and Ricki didn’t cut off Brian’s thumb and send it to his brother as instructed, they go to his house where he screams at them for several minutes before letting them go. Even when Pacino is phoning it in (the man had a low ponytail for crying out loud) he’s the highlight.
In the end, everything works out for everyone because why the fuck not. Brian is let go at the beach like a stray dog and Ricki and Larry drive off into the sunset, leaving glaring plot holes in their wake.
Despite only having a handful of minutes on screen, it was Pacino who accurately and poetically summed up my thoughts on Gigli: “What do you morons think, that this is little Italy? Wake up! THIS IS THE TWENTY-FUCKIN'-FIRST CENTURY!”