The Worst Rom-Com of the Early 2000s

Before there were Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, there were Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Much like our contemporary celebrity power couple, “Bennifer” was all the buzz in the early 2000s. You couldn’t go ten feet without seeing their faces plastered on a magazine or tabloid or hearing about their relationship drama on the news. Safe to say, people got pretty annoyed seeing them everywhere. But do you want to know where they met? Why, on the set of this cinematic abomination! That’s right, folks. Today, I bring you the product of early 2000s pop culture brain rot: Gigli! Because what better way to make people forget they existed by having both of them star in a movie together?

The film opens up to Ben Affleck—I mean—Larry Gigli (last name rhymes with “really”) talking to the camera ala Ferris Bueller style. We soon find out that he’s a street-level Mafioso intimidating a guy who owes his boss, Louis, money. How does he intimidate him? By simply throwing him in a washing machine and…spinning it? We have literally been here for three minutes, and I’m already regretting my decisions. Anyways, Gigli is assigned by Louis to kidnap Brian, a federal prosecutor’s intellectually disabled brother, so that a mob boss will avoid prison time. Gigli successfully does so by pulling a Charlie Babbitt from Rain Man and keeps Brian in his apartment. But tensions soon run high when Louis hires a young woman named Ricky (played by Jennifer Lopez) to keep an eye on both Gigli and Brian.

So let me get this straight: Louis hired Gigli to kidnap Brian yet had so little faith he’d succeed that he went ahead and hired Ricky to look after them. If that’s the case, why bother asking Gigli to do the assignment at all? Why not have Ricky do it all from the get-go? She’s far more charismatic and level-headed than Gigli; she’d have no issue with handling Brian. Did George Lucas get the inspiration for Attack of the Clones’ assassin subplot from here? Why was hiring both Gigli and Ricky necessary? Did he just want to put Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in a room together and see what would happen? Well, we all can see just what happened. I just hope their first date didn’t involve yelling at each other ad nauseam in a cheap motel room.

Despite my…eternal hatred for Ben Affleck (no thanks to movies like this), I still have to respect the guy for his directorial work on Gone Baby, Gone, The Town, Argo, and most recently, Air. But his acting is often a very mixed bag. Unfortunately, it leaves much to be desired in Gigli. Ben Affleck tries his best to play the part of a tough guy who’s known a hard life on the streets. But outside of his cringe-worthy Great Value™ Mafioso cosplay, you never get the sense that he’s this badass enforcer. All of his attempts to sound domineering are as threatening as a whiny, petulant child who didn’t get the toy they wanted. His performance is the epitome of an alien pretending to be a gangster after watching too many cheesy and stereotypical gangster films.

I think Larry Gigli is by far the biggest thundering dumbass I’ve ever seen in a film. He lacks more common sense than all the dumbest schmucks in a slasher film! For example, right after kidnapping Brian, Gigli hears a knock on the door, and upon opening it, sees Ricky asking to use his phone for a “quick second.” Now I don’t know about you, but if a foxy young woman conveniently knocks on my door after I kidnap someone important, the last thing I’d do is let her in. But Gigli is such a dumbass that he actually falls for her ruse. He doesn’t know who she is! For all we know, Ricky could’ve been a cop or an FBI agent! I guess school was right about one thing: criminals aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. Just take a look at our Secretary of War Crimes!

Ok, so Ben’s acting isn’t the best. But maybe his co-star is better, right? Right?!!! If you thought Ben Affleck was bad, Jennifer Lopez is somehow even worse! Despite her best efforts to come across as a 2000s femme fatale, she lacks both identity and agency. She often talks about “her reputation,” yet we have no idea what exactly she does. Is she a mob enforcer? There is a scene that tries to portray Ricky as some cold-hearted badass, where she threatens some hooligans by telling them how she’d rip an eye out of its socket but follows up by telling them to “stay in school” like a soccer mom. Is this how the street handles their problems? I think my elementary school D.A.R.E. program just quaked in its boots. And even though Ben and Jen were dating in real life, they somehow had no chemistry in the film whatsoever!

We’re this far into the review, and I still haven’t mentioned the other characters. Yes, believe it or not, this movie has other characters. The only problem is, they have so little impact on the plot and get so little screen time that they feel more like glorified celebrity guest appearances you’d see on Saturday Night Live or Funny or Die. We have a federal agent played by Christopher Walken and the main mob boss played by Al Pacino. That’s right, the Godfather, himself. My question is, why were these actors here? Were they blackmailed? Quite frankly, I’d be surprised that anyone would do this by their own volition, especially considering how talented and famous they are. I guess it’s really true that as an actor, you need at least one bad movie under your belt.

Some doors are meant to stay shut. Like the DVD case to this movie. I haven’t seen a movie that was so bad that even members of my Bad Movie Club couldn’t stomach it from beginning to end without taking a three-hour nap and snack break. In the wise words of Roger Ebert, “I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated this movie!” If you like crime thrillers or gangster films, just go watch Goodfellas or The Godfather trilogy. You will be getting your time’s worth and much more. And if you like Ben Affleck (whoever you are out there), just go watch The Town or Argo. Just don’t make the same mistakes I did, and waste over two hours of your short existence watching this piece of shit.