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My favorite reviews since Battlefield Earth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"'Gigli' makes 'Hudson Hawk' look like a hiccup, 'Ishtar' like a minor misstep. It’s the stuff 'Mystery Science Theater 3000s' are made of. . . . Watching him try to distract her sexually while she's reading a book is embarrassing. Think: Winnie the Pooh coming on to Catherine Zeta-Jones. . . .One recurring metaphor Gigli employs for the battle of the sexes, gay or straight, is that it all comes down to bulls (him) and cows (her). Maybe that explains why 'Gigli' is such a pile of manure."
Chicago Tribune
"Put together enough pointless, random details, and you get "Gigli," a movie that's less incompetent than bewildering. How on earth did writer-director Martin Brest ("Meet Joe Black," "Scent of a Woman") envision this movie? As "Chasing Amy" meets "Rain Man" meets "Pulp Fiction"? Did someone think that sounded like a winning combination?"
The Cincinnati Enquirer
"There are so many things wrong with Gigli that you might be surprised to hear its worst fault is sheer tedium. ... Whatever the reason, Gigli stutters and flops and flounders around in a sludge of would-be comedy, action and pathos. Tone, pacing and character devlopment are flat out inept. The mood is about as thrilling as the waiting line in an unemployment office. And the dialogue - sweet, screaming Jehosephat, it's awful. "
filmcritic.com
"Together, Affleck and Lopez have approximately six good movies to their names. Gigli isn’t one of them. Vulgar, insensitive and unaware of its direction, the split-personality character study wavers from mob drama to romantic comedy when it should’ve picked one and stuck with it."
Los Angeles Times
"So forget the hype — this movie would stink even without its big-ticket stars, which isn't to say that either is entirely blameless."
New York Times
"But Larry's name is pronounced ZHEE-lee, or as he likes to say, 'rhymes with really.' As in really, really silly, which is the kindest way to describe this hopelessly misconceived exercise in celebrity self-worship, which opens to nationwide ridicule today. . . . In one scene Ricki takes on a group of ill-mannered ruffians who are making noise at a taco stand. Larry wants to beat them up, but she takes a more refined approach, sauntering over in her short denim skirt and lecturing them on their "people skills." She also threatens the apparent ringleader with a baroque martial-arts torture, which involves gouging out the eyes and also removing that part of the brain that stores visual information, so that the victim will not only be blind, but will also lose all memory of what he has seen. Having seen "Gigli," I must say that the idea has a certain appeal."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Gigli" doesn't need a review; it needs an inquest. The movie is dead on arrival. Who or what killed it? There are multiple suspects: Was it the endless prattle? The ludicrously inappropriate soundtrack? The funereal pacing? The uneasy mix of vulgarity and cheap sentiment? The almost nonexistent story? The resounding miscasting of Ben Affleck as a tough guy and Jennifer Lopez as a woman who'd actually speak to him? Or the bad, bad, bad, bad writing? The answer: This is one of those "Murder on the Orient Express" situations, in which all the suspects are guilty. The result is the most thoroughly joyless and inept film of the year, and one of the worst of the decade."
Houston Chronicle
"To readers of People magazine and tawdrier purveyors of celebrity gossip, Gigli is known as the movie that brought Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez together as a couple. For the rest of us, that isn't much of a recommendation. Separately, Affleck and Lopez have rarely given better than passable performances. (This is especially true of Lopez, who acts about as well as she sings.) Together, they present an insurmountable challenge for a film that was saddled with a bum script from the beginning. . . . "
Salon.com
"As is often the case with movies that have poisonous advance word of mouth, "Gigli" turns out to be merely bad -- not a train wreck, not the crime against humanity it's been rumored to be."
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