This misguided romantic comedy goes wrong so often and in such profoundly lunkheaded ways that to say it stinks would be bordering on polite understatement, akin to labeling an irked skunk as faintly fragrant. Gigli, of course, is the film during the making of which the romantic juggernaut known as Bennifer (or should it be Jennufleck?) was launched. One only hopes Affleck and Lopez's life together will be better than this joint effort.
Mostly, Gigli is a gigantic bore, lacking story, speed and sense. Affleck galumphs through as Larry Gigli ("rhymes with really," he says), a dim thug assigned to kidnap the mentally retarded kid brother (Justin Bartha) of a federal prosecutor, a plot that goes nowhere and plays as distastefully as it sounds. Lopez turns up as Ricki, an enforcer assigned to oversee Affleck. Will these two hit the hay despite Ricki's being gay? Maybe, but first they'll endlessly debate the differences between the sexes, including a near-clinical discussion of genitalia.
Writer-director Martin Brest (Meet Joe Black) can't decide if Gigli is a comedy, a character study or a crime drama, ending up with an ungainly hybrid. Lopez has her moments, but she too often seems unduly self-satisfied, purring like a cat that's just finished the cream. (R)
BOTTOM LINE: Icki
Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Eugene Levy, Seann William Scott
Within the first 10 minutes of this shamefully lame third chapter in the American Pie series, Biggs's character winds up the butt of leering jokes—literally, as in being minus his trousers, with his bone-pale derriere catching a breeze. And it isn't the last glimpse of that particular asset to which viewers are treated.
Such use of rear ends is not justified by the means in this nitwit comedy. There was a sweetness to the first 1999 Pie that made it, though crude, endearing. That saving grace was missing from the 2001 sequel, and it fails to resurface in American Wedding. In chronicling the mishaps that occur as recent college grads Jim (Biggs) and Michelle (Hannigan) approach their wedding day, the movie is an extended gross-out joke. Biggs and Hannigan are stuck replaying variations on scenes from the earlier films, as are Levy as Jim's dad and Scott as his randy pal Stifler, though this time Stifler's obnoxiousness borders on the psychopathic. (R)
BOTTOM LINE: Pass on this leftover slice of American Pie
Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan
In Disney's second, so-so adaptation of Mary Rodgers's popular 1972 children's novel, Curtis plays the mom who magically swaps bodies with her teenage daughter for one weird, enlightening day. A widowed psychologist on the verge of remarrying when the switcheroo hits, Curtis punks up her hair and jams on electric guitar. It's a game performance that could have been wilder. Lohan, as the daughter taken over by a maternal soul, has been misdirected—she suggests Tara Reid with a puritanical streak.
Note to students of cultural history: In Disney's first, still funnier 1976 version, the father (John Astin) isn't just alive—he's a sexist. He so thoughtlessly orders about his child (Jodie Foster) and stay-at-home wife (crazy, dizzy Barbara Harris), he's angrily described as a male chauvinist pig. It all plays like some unconscious feminist experiment, Ibsen by way of Mickey Mouse. (PG)
BOTTOM LINE: Weak Friday
•BUFFALO SOLDIERS In a sharp comic drama, an enterprising Army clerk (Joaquin Phoenix) hawks illegal drugs and arms while serving on a U.S. base in Germany. Ed Harris costars. (R)
•CAMP Teenagers at a theater-themed summer camp put on shows and deal with their emerging sexuality-most of the boys view the world through a queer eye-in a tart comedy. (PG-13)
•HOTEL A name cast (David Schwimmer, Salma Hayek, Burt Reynolds) gamely take part in director Mike Figgis's experimental but highly watchable doodle about movie folk quartered at a mysterious Venice hotel. (R)
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
