Gigli

Larry Gigli is a low-level L.A. mobster who is eager to prove himself tougher and more capable than he is. His superior, Louis, orders him to kidnap Brian, the younger brother of a federal prosecutor who has an intellectual disability, so the prosecutor can be pressured into helping New York mob boss Starkman avoid prison. Larry lures Brian away by promising to take him "to the Baywatch", referring to the television series that Brian is fixated on. Although Larry completes the abduction, Louis does not trust him to handle the situation alone and sends another associate, a woman who calls herself Ricki, to supervise him. Larry is immediately attracted to Ricki, but resents Louis's lack of confidence in him and dislikes taking orders from her. He is also irritated by Brian's constant demands to go to "the Baywatch". Ricki tells Larry that she is a lesbian, rebuffing his attempts to flirt with her. Brian also has a love for the Australian accent spoken by a woman, so he runs up insurmountable phone bills calling Australia and talking to an Australian operator. As Larry, Ricki, and Brian hide out in Larry's apartment, the kidnapping becomes more dangerous. Louis orders Larry and Ricki to cut off Brian's thumb and send it to the prosecutor. Horrified by the instruction, Larry instead sneaks into a hospital morgue, removes a corpse's thumb, and mails it as if it belonged to Brian. During this period, Larry grows closer to Ricki and speaks more openly about himself, his family, and his frustrations with his life. Ricki begins to soften toward him, and the two eventually sleep together. Larry and Ricki are then summoned to meet Starkman. Starkman reveals that he never approved the kidnapping scheme and is furious that Louis acted without authorization. He is even more angered by the severed thumb sent to the prosecutor, since it does not match Brian's fingerprints and therefore exposes the bluff rather than increasing pressure. Concluding that Louis has created unnecessary scrutiny from law enforcement and mishandled the situation, Starkman kills him. Starkman then turns on Larry and Ricki, prepared to have them killed as well. Ricki persuades him to spare them by arguing that only they know where Brian is and are therefore the only people who can contain the damage and prevent Brian from identifying anyone connected to the kidnapping. Starkman reluctantly agrees and sends them away. Realizing they are no longer safe in the mob, Larry and Ricki decide to flee together and abandon their criminal lives. They take Brian with them and discuss returning him to where Larry first found him. While driving along the coast, they come across a beach video shoot resembling the kind of imagery Brian associates with Baywatch. Brian begs to be dropped off there, and Larry and Ricki finally agree. Brian talks to one of the women there, and is over the moon that she's Australian. Larry urges Ricki to take his car and leave without him so she will be safe, but after she drives off, she changes her mind and returns for him. The two reunite, pick up their escape together, and drive away to begin a new life. ==Cast==

Produced for Revolution Studios, Gigli formed part of Joe Roth's early strategy for the studio, which was launched in 2000 to make about half a dozen mid-budget films a year for release through Sony. Tim Robey wrote that Roth initially aimed to keep Revolution's films below $50 million, but Sony's commercial rebound in 2002 encouraged a more expensive 2003 slate; after several costly underperformers, including Gigli, Revolution lowered budgets, curtailed back-end deals and reduced staff. In 2003, the L.A. Times reported that Brest, like Ron Shelton, had been allowed to write, produce and direct his picture with final cut, an arrangement Revolution later reconsidered after those underperformers. Halle Berry was originally attached to co-star opposite Ben Affleck, but Robey writes that she withdrew because of scheduling conflicts on X2. She was replaced by Jennifer Lopez, who signed on in late 2001 after her planned thriller Tick Tock was cancelled in the wake of 9/11. Variety reported that Lopez received $12 million for the film; Robey added that this was $500,000 less than Affleck's reported salary and that her deal also included back-end participation in the high single digits. The production notes also state that Gigli's apartment exterior was based on a Hollywood building, while the interior was constructed on a soundstage. According to later accounts by Brest and Affleck, the film was substantially reshaped after principal photography. Affleck said the studio, encouraged by tabloid fascination with his and Lopez's off-screen relationship, pushed the picture further toward a romance built around the pair. In a 2023 interview with Variety, Brest said the released film had been changed "so radically" that its themes, plot and purpose no longer matched his original conception. He added that disagreements with Sony shut down post-production for eight months and that extensive reshooting and re-editing altered the characters, scenes, story and tone, leaving him responsible for what he called "a ghastly cadaver of a movie". ==Release==

Marketing According to people involved in the film's release, Sony and Revolution struggled to market Gigli against "a tide of bad press", while the off-screen relationship between Affleck and Lopez became the picture's "greatest marketing liability". Tim Robey wrote that the film's first poster foregrounded Affleck and Lopez as a romantic couple, while the trailer and other marketing materials omitted that Ricki was a lesbian. The Los Angeles Times reported that Sony and Revolution later tried to counter the tabloid focus by shifting the advertising toward the film's plot and away from its stars, but that strategy was quickly overshadowed by further coverage of the couple's relationship. Reporting on its debut, the L.A. Times described the result as a "commercial disaster", noting that it was the worst opening for a wide release starring Lopez since U-Turn and for Affleck since Phantoms. In its second weekend, the film grossed $678,640, a 81.9% decline from its opening weekend. Box Office Mojo reported that Gigli held the record for the largest second-weekend drop for a wide release, until Undiscovered surpassed this mark in 2005. Robey wrote that by its third weekend the film had been dropped from 2,215 cinemas to just 73, a 97% loss of screens, which he described as a record at the time. It ended its theatrical run with $6,087,542 in the USA and Canada and $1,178,667 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $7,266,209 against a reported budget of $75.6 million. In October 2003, The Guardian reported that Sony Pictures attributed part of a $42 million third-quarter loss to the film's box-office performance. ==Reception==

Critical response Reviews were overwhelmingly negative. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "D−" on an A+ to F scale. In the L.A. Times, Manohla Dargis called the film "nearly as unwatchable as it is unpronounceable", and wrote that it was built around jokes about "the disabled" and "switch-hitting lesbians". Writing in The Washington Post, Stephen Hunter called it "enervated, torpid, slack, dreary", and objected that Brian's disability was "played for chuckles and yuks". In Slant Magazine, Ed Gonzalez introduced the film as "Romantic comedy. Mob spoof. Dysfunctional family melodrama. Rain Man Redux", before dismissing it as "bizarre but inane". Several critics also singled out the lead performances. Dargis wrote that Ben Affleck lacked "the chops or the charm" to get around the material, while Hunter said that Affleck and Jennifer Lopez had "very little electricity on-screen". A minority of reviewers were more mixed. Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that it tried "to do something different, thoughtful, and a little daring"; although he concluded that "the movie doesn't work", he praised parts of the dialogue and several of the supporting performances. In Variety, Amy Dawes was also relatively receptive, calling the film "an enjoyably written and performed romantic comedy", though she suggested that the publicity surrounding Affleck and Lopez would make it difficult to judge on its own terms. Accolades ==Aftermath==

After its release, Gigli came to be treated as a symbol of high-profile Hollywood failure. In 2013, the L.A. Times called it "almost industry shorthand for commercial and critical ignominy", while Jason Bailey wrote in The Guardian in 2021 that the title had become "a shorthand for embarrassing flops". Writing in Box Office Poison, Tim Robey described Gigli as "the most notorious bomb of its day", arguing that the film exemplified the "inflated dealmaking of the early 2000s". In 2024, Affleck similarly described Gigli as "the most famous bomb in history, perhaps". Much of the film's afterlife has been inseparable from the celebrity phenomenon of "Bennifer". Bailey argued that, by the time the film reached cinemas, backlash against Affleck and Lopez had already "built up quite a head of steam". The film's failure also affected the marketing of the pair's next collaboration, Jersey Girl. Bailey wrote that the film's "lingering odor" was so strong that advertising for the later film omitted Lopez, The fallout also shaped the careers of the film's principals. Affleck later said that the reaction to Gigli pushed him toward directing, which became "the real love of [his] professional life". Lopez described the period as a personal and professional low point. In a 2017 interview with Vanity Fair, she said she had been "eviscerated", had "lost [her] sense of self", and felt that her relationship with Affleck had "self-destructed in front of the entire world". Dodd and Fradley argued that Lopez's next starring vehicle, Shall We Dance?, functioned as a relatively low-key "recuperative performance" designed to repair the gap between the pleasures of Lopez's romantic-comedy persona and the damage done to her public image by the failures of Gigli and "Bennifer". Robey wrote that Affleck and Lopez were eventually able to reposition themselves, but that the same could not be said for Martin Brest, whose directing career was effectively halted by Gigli. Brest has not directed another feature film to date, and in a 2023 interview he described the released film as "a bloody mess that deserved its excoriation". ==See also==