August 1, 2003

“All I’m saying is, any bird that goes ‘gobble, gobble,’ is just asking to be a sandwich.”
..................................................................................................... - Jack In The Box

Reviewing Gigli seems almost like whipping a dead horse. Of course, the Gigli version of the horse would be wearing silk stockings and a pair of panties that made it clear that the stud was ready for action. A mentally retarded boy would be in the background singing the theme to Mr. Ed. And the horse would give an impassioned speech about the joys of mounting a 2300-pound member of the opposite sex.

Gigli is as bad as everyone is saying. I could count the ways, but I prefer to explain why the stuff everyone is talking about is really only the tip of the depressing iceberg. Of course, there is The Penis Speech, The Vagina Speech (which does, in fact, ends with Ms. Lopez pulling her shorts up in a way that you can see the outline of her labia), The Sneezing Penis, The Psycho Cameo (Walken’s) and The Different Set Cameo (Pacino’s), The Professional Killers Who Freak When Witnessing A Murder, The Baywatch, The Rapping Retard, The Eyeball Removal Speech & Lainie Kazan’s Ass. It is a veritable Horn & Hardart of terrible choices.

No, I am far more concerned about the hideous lack of attention to simple details by a former quality director. For instance, if you are holding a hostage and the local cop is on your trail, wouldn’t you close the curtains in your bay-windowed apartment? Maybe you’d drive your convertible with the top up. Maybe you’d close the door after your partner’s lesbian lover barged into the apartment, making a lot of noise. These are the basics of making a movie that has any sense of reality at all.

Now with all the wacky scenes mentioned above, you might think that this film is pushing the cutting edge, as Salon’s Charles Taylor got sucked into arguing in a classic piece of contrarianism. The single greatest weakness of this movie is that underneath all the wink-wink, nudge-nudge, she’s talking about her vagina, it is about as politically correct as an episode of Davy & Goliath.

For all the talk about sex, the one sex scene in the film is pure fade out missionary, circa 1948. Even though the repeated jokes based on a mentally retarded young man saying things that you would not expect him to say is a bit disturbing, the two other main characters consistently treat him, their kidnapping victim, with real kindness. (Never mind the uniquely hideous music cues that tell us how much Ben really cares about people.)

The story of Gigli screams for some real edge. It feels like the movie was written and then thinned out more and more to make the characters more likeable and the inevitable “get together” in the end remotely believable. First, it still isn’t believable. But, more importantly, the emasculation makes the ride truly worthless. Was Larry Gigli ever a really dangerous guy, really dumb, really mean to the retarded kid, believing that his cock is the center of the known universe? Did J-Lo’s “Rikki” see her lesbianism as more than an intellectual conceit, use her superior intellect to really shred poor Gigli, and use him sexually like a battery operated piece of rubber? I don’t know. But it sure would have made more sense.

The one great he kills/she kills comedy is, of course, Prizzi’s Honor. The storylines are wildly different. But that film certainly understood the most critical rule of comedy… play to your highest intelligence. Even when an actor is “playing dumb,” the memorable dumb roles are characters that are trying their level best to do the smart thing. Everyone here is playing stupid. My God, by the end even the retarded character has been reduced to “putting on” his mental limitations and not really being as dumb as he seems. Affleck’s Gigli, on the other hand, is unrelentingly dumb... and a failure in every way possible. J-Lo’s “Rikki” is, for the most part, a pretentious New Age bore who tries to seem smart, but cannot finish her book and submits to Gigli without even forcing him to prove that he knows how to “gobble gobble.” If everyone is a patsy, there is no drama. If there is no drama, there is no comedy. And so it goes.

I do not write once-great directors off easily. I am hopeful about the next few films from Woody Allen, though the idea of him having an affair with Christina Ricci in his next films somehow puts me more in mind of smothering than lust. (Maybe they use chicken fat as a lubricant.) (NOTE 8/1 - DreamWorks informs me that there is no remance between Woody and Christina... just Christina and Hason Biggs. My apologies... and unending relief!)

But Martin Brest’s descent from his excellent early work to Scent of A Woman (over the top and overlong, but still effective) to Meet Joe Black (way, way too long and missed the value of having a young superstar like Pitt to play with) to this Project Greenlight reject is really quite sad. This film, more than the last two, seems to be a return to what Brest was best at… surprising human behavior in the face of adversity. But it seems to me, again, that he pulled his punches… and thus, cut his own throat.

Gigli can be forgiven… but never, ever forgotten.

ONE FINAL HISTORICAL NOTE: The Al Pacino cameo involves my single favorite piece of CG in recent years, as they spent a lot of money putting Pacino in the same room with Ben-Lo by having him cross behind the couch that they were sitting on… though it is clear that his cross and their sitting was shot as different times.

UHHHH: I wish I didn’t have to do this, but something is very wrong at Variety as regards Columbia Pictures. The name that fronts this wrong is Amy Dawes, once a regular critic at Variety who I am told, went off to seek a career in a different part of the business. She has written for various parts of the trade paper in the meanwhile, but she suddenly jumped into the front lines to give one of the very rare positive reviews of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. The review was not just positive. It was a rave.

When I saw that Variety chose not to review Gigli until today, my suspicions were raised. I have never seen a release day embargo held by the trades… maybe it has happened and I missed it. But then, when I clicked on the review and found the author, I was a little queasy. It was Ms. Dawes. Then I read the review.

Her opening graph includes:

“A silly but still an enjoyably written and performed romantic comedy.”
and
“A story that sounds ludicrous but is actually fun to watch.”

It’s not exactly a rave, but even apologist Charles Taylor was tougher on the film than Dawes.

What the hell is going on? The only movie other than these two Columbia titles that Dawes has been assigned was a doc review at the Latino Film Festival.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

OH THE HUMANITY: It is not the classic conversation here at THB, but ESPN’s Kristen Fisher wrote a rather compelling piece about be “the prey” in a man’s eyes, identifying a bit with “Kobe’s Accuser,” but seeing a little more deeply, into her own guilt, fear and understanding. One of the themes that this column does try to espouse is that of seeing the human instead of the image, the depth instead of the surface. And this piece does it as well as any you will ever read. Click here to read it yourself.

WEEKEND PREVIEW: This weekend could get pretty interesting... but it probably won’t. American Wedding should deliver. Gigli should do better than some expect. And the first wide release of Bend It Like Beckham should make the Top Ten, but not rock the world.

For a company that doesn’t seem to encourage comparisons between their Seabiscuit and last summer’s Road To Perdition, Universal is sure following the same distribution track. Last weekend, Seabiscuit opened in 1989 venues, 192 more than Perdition. This weekend, they are adding 432 venues, mirroring Perdition’s second weekend addition of 362 venues. The result for DreamWorks was a 30.2 percent drop. So, I will predict the same for Seabiscuit. There is one twist in the Seabiscuit tale… it got started two weeks later into the season than Perdition did.

WEEKEND GUESSTIMATES

American Wedding – 3175 venues – new - $28.8 million
Spy Kids 3D - 3364 venues - off 44 percent - $18.7 million
Pirates of the Caribbean - 3390 venues - off 35 percent - $15 million
Seabiscuit - 2421 venues - off 30.2 percent - $14.56 million
Gigli - 2215 venues – new - $13 million
Bad Boys II - 3022 venues - off 49 percent - $11.2 million
Tomb Raider 2 - 3222 venues - off 42 percent - $12.6 million
Bend It Like Beckham - 1002 venues – n/a - $2.8 million
Finding Nemo - 1777 venues - off 38 percent - $2.7 million
The League - 2007 venues - off 53 percent - $2.4 million

READER OF THE DAY: MOTHER HEN writes: “Gigli has attracted so much terrible notices that it has already been identified as a "video selection" by our "so-bad-it-really, really, really-stinks" video club, which consists of four people. Gigli, when it comes out on video, will be rented by our group, and we will split the cost, each paying just 89 cents to see this wonder. The movie will join the company of such wonders as "Pay it Forward" (one of the highlights was watching in slow-mo, over and over, of the drunken Helen Hunt character slapping little Haley Joel) and the uber-product placed (and besides just truly awful) "I Am Sam." Maybe J-Lo and Ben-Lo can someday hope for (acting) Oscar success if they take the lesson from Mr. Penn and play a mentally-challenged character. However, from what I've read, they may be doing just that in this picture.”

CB DeMILLE writes: “It seems there are a combination of factors here. First, the public has been well trained by now to quench their undeniable instant-gratification urges to see movies opening weekend. Secondly, the studios have packed the summer months so tightly, as we’ve all beaten to death, so there’s no room for any film to breath or find its legs. Combine them, and you have an environment where audiences have been told that “THIS WEEKEND, THE EVENT MOVIE OF THE CENTURY IS HERE NOW, NOW, NOW!!!” and they hear it each and every single week. Whether the movie requires that kind of hype or not, the marketing is relentless, and it’s a new, different movie that audiences feel compelled to see every weekend. By the time mid-July comes around, after seeing the “must see movie” every week in May and June, (and being burned more times than not), it’s simple – people are just plain tired and numb.

When the summer movies weren’t crammed together like sardines, it feels as if audiences didn’t get tired until August or September (or is that just when studios decided to dump their crummy films?), but now fatigue is setting in earlier and earlier, and that’s got to be terrifying for studios. They’ve still got their tentpoles set up in July, but they’ve slammed us so hard for two months, we can’t take anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, if the quality is good and the noise is loud, consistent, and trustworthy enough, I still believe word will get out and a strong film will find its audience, but the Charlie’s Angels and Tomb Raiders of the world (if they choose to open in mid- to late-July) will suffer the consequences. Hmmm… maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all.”

E ME: How fast will you get on line to Giggle With Gigli?

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