Ray Pride

Once upon a time, about fifty-seven-million dollars ago, in the Land Beyond Final Cut, there lived a fierce and mighty and peculiar auteur, and his name was Martin Brest.

Brest's new movie is "Gigli," which is like "Heaven's Gate," but with fewer horses. Larry "Pronounced like Really" Gigli (Ben Affleck) is a grossly witless, semi-literate cock-of-the-walk wannabe who does the bidding of Louis, a foul-mouthed mob middleman (Lenny Venito) who glowers and threatens like Jackie Gleason at his most "to-the-moon, Alice!" In an attempt to forestall the indictment of a mob boss, Gigli is enlisted to kidnap the twentysomething brother of a federal prosecutor. Brian (Justin Bartha) suffers Movieberger's syndrome, a convenient blend of high-functioning autism, Tourette's, horniness and monstrous sentimentality. A second operative, Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), fond of low-rise midriff-and-haunch-baring jeans, is dispatched to join the reindeer games, since Louis thinks Gigli is a colossal screw-up. (Mr. Question asks: Why not just send the tough yet perfumed Ricki and forget the man who couldn't suss out the captions in Maxim?) "In every relationship, there's a bull and a cow," Affleck lows. "Bull," he says, pointing to himself, drawing out his inexpert put-on numbskull enunciation, "Cow," he explains, pointing to Lopez.

Surely one of the few motion pictures to hail from Mars, "Gigli" outdoes the bloated nonsense of Brest's three-hour "Meet Joe Black" with this profane, shockingly nonsensical gangsters-meet-"Rain Man" amalgam. "Gigli" does not partake of the same kind of immoral sleaze as "Bad Boys II," but it is a botch of astral proportions nonetheless.

A badly written, badly blocked and badly performed bedroom scene of cringe-inducing detail introduces to us to Ricki's preference for women. I always thought I had a fairly strong stomach, but wish I'd never been exposed to this cockamamie physical incarnation of Gigli, starting with a greasy pompadour that looks like a bad hairpiece, stripping down to a measly chest merkin and a gross biceps tattoo. The scene is of such protracted and grueling length that I was able to make a census of the number of acoustical tiles in the screening-room ceiling. And yes, as is usually the case with true-life couples, the tab duo has zero chemistry on screen. Lopez is genial and game, but she is paired with one stiff customer.

The first forty minutes of "Gigli" (rumored to have been shorn of about an hour from Brest's cut) is genuinely discomfiting in its inexplicability. (The by-play with the script-challenged Brian is almost as nauseating as the bedroom scene.) Abruptly, playing a policeman, Walken microwaves in from a farther reach of the universe, bringing momentary light to Gigli's unfurnished yet shabby L.A. bachelor pad. Every shot of Walken in his single scene seems drawn from the most protracted and bewildering of alternate takes which, in this case, is a small good thing. Here's an approximate transcription of Walken's otherworldly vaudeville: "Man, you know what I'd like to do right now? Go down to the House of PIES! Get me a BIG BOWL of pie and ICE CREAM! Put some on your head! (Pronounced 'Heyyy-YED!') Your tongue would knock your brains out trying to get at it!"

There's a potentially exquisite scene where Ricki defends the virtues of the female form, even if I was seeing words on the script page in my brain while also watching Lopez shifting yoga positions in biker shorts and a sports bra, displaying distensions of her surely insured butt. While invoking a comparison to a man's genitalia as "a long toe," she elaborates that everyone wants "firm, delicious wet lips... a dizzyingly scented mouth. That's what everyone wants to kiss... a mouth. The mouth is the twin sister of the vagina." Lopez almost pulls off this dizzyingly pretentious encomium to cunnilingus. (Almost.) Ricki assures Gigli that this is one of God's great glories, one "that I am proud... to call... my pussy." Teary, he concurs.

Still, the carmined corpse of "Gigli" offers a few tingly hints of true genderfuck, such as that Ricki might be the more stronger-willed and sexual human than Gigli, the sculpted tower of Velveeta. "Do you think your fingernails need trimming?" Ricki prompts, suggesting a bit of lesbian-styled prestidigitation; he cluelessly takes it as a comment on his near-sightedness. "I thought you wanted to be my bitch," she teases this narcissistic brain-dead cliché, among other hints that she might be taking him down the lane to become what might best be described as her own Back Door Betty. Inviting him to go down on her, Ricki growls, "It's turkey time. Gobble, gobble. Lay some of that sweet hetero-lingus on me." Bowing to the ratings system, what's simulated is almost entirely missionary position or Ricki's power games looking down upon his fuck-squinted face.

The movie ends with a transcendentally wrong and bad and strangely touching scene driving past a film scene being shot on the Pacific Coast Highway between Santa Monica and Malibu. Should I describe it as a musical number? It is insane. It is a reshoot and a perverse revenge by one of the most willful of willful directors. "Gigli"? Big wall, lots of shit, some of it sticks.

"Gigli" opens Friday.

(2003-07-30)

Also by Ray Pride

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Tip of the Week
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