Movie Review: Up in the Air

Up in the Air (2009) 

Directed by Jason Reitman 

Written by Jason Reitman 

Starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman, Danny McBride 

Release Date December 4th, 2009 

Published December 3rd, 2009 

It's a horrifying idea but I am told it is real. Companies actually do hire people to fire employees for them. It's bad enough losing your job but to have the people you have given your hard work and dedication to for however many years hand you off to someone else for the worst moment of your career is a disgusting thought. It's just the kind of cowardly and dehumanizing effect of modern capitalism that turns my stomach. 

George Clooney gives life to one of these workplace specters of career death in a snappy suit, a  and a pamphlet for a sickle. He's the villain of this story in many ways but by drilling down on this character, we don't find a villain but a lonely, sad result of what soulless capitalist pursuits can do to a human soul. George Clooney delivers the best performance of his career under the direction of Jason Reitman in Up in the Air. 

In “Up in the Air” George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man who takes pride in spending some 330 days of the year traveling. He has a semblance of a home, a tidy bachelor hovel in Omaha, near the corporate headquarters of the company he works for but rarely sees. It is Ryan's job to fly into cities across the country, visit some no name corporate outlet and do the boss's dirty work - firing people. He and the company have some cruel euphemism for firing but it's a firing and it's as ugly as you imagine. 

Ryan is very good at his job, occasionally he's actually soothing which, given the circumstance, is rather impressive. Ryan doesn't love his job, though when asked to he can romanticize and defend it. What he truly loves is the travel which allows him the comfort he's never found at home. In passing relations with fellow travelers and the faux kindness of the service industry professionals he encounters Ryan finds the kinds of relationship he's never achieved with just one person. Simple relationships unencumbered by emotion or instability.

Naturally, all of Ryan's notions are soon challenged. The first challenge is personal as, while on a layover in some airline lounge, he strikes up a conversation with Alex (Vera Farmiga) over her choice of Blackberry. The conversation soon turns to travel, rental cars, hotel upgrades and all of the things both truly cherish. He tells her he has a goal for airline miles but refuses to tell her what it is. That, for Ryan, is too personal.

The second challenge is professional and arrives in the form of Natalie (Anna Kendrick), an up-and-comer from the home office in Omaha who has a plan that will take Ryan off the road and strand him in Nebraska. She wants to fire people over a computer link up and the honchos, led by a less than convincing Jason Bateman, are ready to back the idea. In defending his way of doing things Ryan inadvertently ends up with Natalie as his protégé and traveling partner as he teaches her how to do his job.

Jason Reitman and  co-screenwriter Sheldon Turner tell a two track story in Up in the Air that coalesces into one spectacular series of scenes that includes gate-crashing a computer convention and an appearance by rapper Young MC. These scenes show Ryan and Alex falling in love while young Natalie unwittingly challenges each of their notions about who they are and why they are attracted to one another. This happens as she mourns the loss of the only relationship she has known in her own life. 

Of course, the scenes that will strike a chord with 2009 audiences are scenes featuring real people who went through the pain of being fired during the bailout crisis and recession of this late portion of the decade. Director Jason Reitman hired real people who had lost their jobs to take part in these scenes and the pain in their voices as they talk about the loss of their jobs is exceptionally powerful.

The firing sessions give the film weight and allow the romance to blossom around them in unexpected ways. Scenes with actors Zach Galifianakis and Reitman favorite J.K Simmons provide the visual link between the film world and the real world. Without Galifianakis and Simmons, among others, the transition between the real world of these awful firings to the film world's comedy and romance would be too jarring. It’s among many smart choices in this terrifically smart film.

In the end, “Up in the Air” is a film about connections - literal and figurative. The unique ways in which Ryan Bingham’s personal and professional lives connect are at the heart of a film that may not strive to define the last decade of American culture but in many ways does. From our current economic uncertainty, to our ever more casual sexuality, to our changing attitude about infidelities and modern obsessions with gadgetry, “Up in the Air” offers a modest comment on each and does so with style, wit, a little romance and never feels arrogant or overblown doing it.

Writer George Will flippantly called “Up in the Air” ‘Grapes of Wrath for the service industry.’ He’s not entirely wrong. Where that book and film defined a movement toward social justice coming out of the Great Depression, inside the romance of “Up in the Air” is an inkling of a cry for a just truce between greedy corporate titans and the humans they refer to as resources. It is only an inkling; this is still a modern, big star, Hollywood production, just one with a big beating heart for those who are struggling.

Movie Review 10,000 B.C

10,000 B.C 

Directed by Roland Emmerich 

Written by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser 

Starring Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis 

Release Date March 7th, 2008 

Published March 6th, 2008 

Director Roland Emmerich has a track record that only Uwe Boll might envy. Based on the success of his one, Will Smith aided, success, Independence Day, Emmerich has been handed massive budget followed by massive budget to make one awful movie after another. There was Mel Gibson's jingoistic yay America, faux history actioner, The Patriot. Then Emmerich assassinated the legendary cheeseball Japanese monster Godzilla. Then he made a joke of environmental science with the mind numbingly awful The Day After Tomorrow. Now Emmerich is denigrating the stone age with his Flintstones-esque 10,000 B.C. I take that back, The Flintstones has more historical integrity than anything with Roland Emmerich's name on it.

Steven Strait, the vacant eyed, model cheekboned star of The Covenant takes the lead role in 10,000 B.C as D'leh. After his father deserted the tribe to chase the hunt, D'Leh became an outcast. Raised by dad's best friend Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis), D'Leh lived to live down his father's shame. Thus when given the chance to hunt the massive wooly mammoth he risks his life to be the one to take down the beast. Secondary to overcoming his shame is winning the hand of the fair, blue eyed, Evolet (Camilla Bell), a transplant from another tribe that was overrun by four legged demons.

Those 4 legged demons are actually another tribe; smarter and more vicious than our heroes. They have horses. This evil tribe overruns other tribes, takes the men hostage and uses them to build temples to their pagan gods. When the four legged demons come to D'Leh's camp they kill men, women and children and take as many hostages as possible. A rare few survive and escape including D'Leh and his mentor Tic'Tic. Now they must hunt the hunters and free their people so that D'Leh can reclaim his girl, she was taken hostage, and become the leader of his tribe.

That is the plot in a linear, logical sense, and it's not bad in description. Unfortunately, as executed by Roland Emmerich and his apparently amateur effects team, 10,000 B.C plays alternately like the worst of Mystery Science Theater schlock or a bad Saturday Night Live skit. A scene early in the film where D'Leh and company hunt wooly mammoths literally features scenes of actors obviously running in place in front of a green screen. Later, the masses of extras building temples for the bad guys comes off as stolen stock footage of Liz Taylor's Cleopatra.

Then there is our star Steven Strait. Anyone who saw his work in the indie music drama Undiscovered, the film best known for the acting debut of Ashlee Simpson, knows that vacant stare and empty good looks. This ex-model leads a cast of gap ad ready cavemen into battle against what can only be described as the cast of the Arabic Project Runway. The bad guys, aside from a couple of toughs who lead the human hunting party, are an effete, pageantry loving people who mince like Rip Taylor in the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade. Why? Who knows why? But they do.

In a career of really bad movies, Roland Emmerich has finally hit his career low. If he can make a movie more ludicrous and amateurish, I hope we never see it. 10,000 B.C is a brutal, mind numbing, unintentionally humorous trip back in time.

Movie Review Glory Road

Glory Road (2006) 

Directed by James Gartner 

Written by Chris Cleveland, Bettina Gillois, Gregory Alan Howard

Starring Josh Lucas, Derek Luke, Jon Voight 

Release Date January 13th, 2006 

Published January 12th, 2006 

Filling the yearly niche of the inspirational sports movie is the historical record of a true turning point in the history of collegiate basketball. Glory Road is the story of the 1966 West Texas University Miners who upset the powerhouse Kentucky University Wildcats to become national champions. The victory was notable because Western coach Don Haskins started five African Americans, a first for any college basketball team. If the movie were as relevant as its inspiration we might have a real winner here. Unfortunately a director for hire, working under the auspices of the Bruckheimer regime, only turns out a formula picture that hits the notes of importance and never becomes important on its own.

In 1965 Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) was coaching girls high school basketball somewhere in the dust bowl of Oklahoma when he was offered the head coaching position at tiny Texas Western University. Though the job was low paying and Haskins and his wife (Emily Deschanel) would have to live in the men's dorm, with their two young children, the job was his first chance to coach Division 1 men's basketball. He could not pass up the opportunity.

Packed off to the scorching hot oil fields of El Paso Texas, Haskins had no plans on making history. He simply wanted to put a winning team on the court. The fastest way to improve the Texas Western Miners team was to do something that few other programs in the country were willing to do. Actively recruit several African American players.

By 1966 college basketball had long been integrated but there was a basketball equivalent of Jim Crow laws in place, off the books. As described by the teams long time trainer Ross Moore, (Red West) teams, especially in the south, had African American players but usually no more than one. If a team had more than one black player they were only allowed to play them one at a time unless the team was losing. Having more than two African Americans on a team was simply unheard of for a southern school.

Haskins actively recruited and ultimately acquired seven African American players including a pair of high school superstars, Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke), and David Latin (Schin A.S Kerr). Texas Western first made history for being the first NCAA division one team to have more African American players than Caucasian but, of course, as history tells us, there was plenty more history to be made. As the season went on, and team and coach melded to each other's style of play, the team was nearly undefeated and finally faced off with the legendary Adolph Rupp (Jon Voight) and his Kentucky University Wildcats for the national collegiate basketball championship.

Glory Road is a typical Disney/Bruckheimer sports film. Like The Rookie and Remember The Titans before it, Glory Road has a particular formula to execute and anything else is merely extraneous. The key to formula filmmaking is not necessarily to subvert the formula, though that would be welcome, rather it is to improve upon the formula with casting and execution. Unfortunately director Rod Gartner is unable to capitalize on either of those elements.

Gartner sticks to the job at hand which is simply moving Chris Cleveland's very basic script to the screen with minimal innovation. While the basketball scenes are impressively shot and edited and move with great speed and skill, when Glory Road leaves court it's all about tugging the heartstrings. Scenes in Glory Road play like signposts instructing the audience to sigh here, laugh here, or cry here. The script banks on the real life importance of this story to give the movie gravity and in the process never earns that gravity on its own.

The story of the Texas Western Miners of 1966 is a sports and cultural landmark deserving of an enshrinement on film but if deification is Glory Road's only ambition we might as well be watching an ESPN documentary on the real team and players and save the movie theater ticket price.

A year ago Coach Carter filled the role of the obligatory inspirational sports movie. The difference between that film and Glory Road however is that where Glory Road assumes its importance from its true story, Coach Carter earned its importance with stronger characters and better storytelling. It definitely helps that in the lead role Coach Carter had the weighty presence of Samuel L. Jackson while Glory Road lives with the less impressive Josh Lucas.

Watching Josh Lucas I get the impression of Hollywood trying to sell me something. Since his breakthrough performance in the dreadful romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama Lucas has been given a couple of opportunities to become a movie star and has demonstrated that he just doesn't have it. It's not that he is a bad actor, his performance in the little seen indie Around The Bend demonstrates his real talent, what Lucas lacks is star presence.

The rest of the cast of Glory Road struggles as much as Lucas. The young actors who make up the team are thinly drawn and fit the formula roles required of a formula film. There is the funny one, the troubled one, and the loner. With so many characters and only so much screen time the caricatured players tend to blend into one another and become forgettable.

In the role of Coach Haskins' wife Emily Deschanel seems terribly miscast. Like her more independent minded younger sister Zooey, Emily Deschanel carries an innate intelligence and presence that, in this case, overwhelms her tiny underwritten and ultimately insignificant role. Casting Deschanel in this role is a mistake not because she isn't a very talented actress, it's the opposite of that. Because Deschanel is so talented we expect more from her and are greatly disappointed that the filmmaker does not take full advantage of her talent.

Glory Road, like most uplifting Hollywoodized histories, takes liberties with its subject. While Texas Western was the first team to win the national title starting five black players, it should be noted that in 1956 San Francisco University lead by Bill Russell won the title with four African American starters. I don't mean to diminish the importance of the true story of Texas Western but as scripted the film can seem false by implying.

Movie Review Glass

Glass (2019) 

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan 

Written by M. Night Shyamalan 

Starring Bruce Willis, James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor Joy, Sarah Paulson 

Release Date January 18th, 2019 

Published January 17th, 2019 

As the biggest fan on the planet of M Night Shyamalan’s Split, I had a bias in favor of Glass. I was deeply excited for this sequel to two movies that I absolutely adored in Unbreakable and Split. So, for me to say that Glass is a bizarre, cheap, sloppy mess of a movie is really saying something. I tried to like this movie, I attempted to will Glass into being a good movie. I tried to rationalize it into working as a narrative. Nothing I tried worked as my logical brain overwhelmed my fanboy instinct, forcing this admission: Glass is terrible.

Glass picks up the story of Unbreakable and Split in the wake of the revelation that the two are in the same universe. David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has been fighting evil since the day he sent Elijah Price, aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L Jackson) to prison for his terrorist acts. Using his super strength and extra-sensory perception, David has turned his attention to The Horde, the name given to the multiple personalities of Kevin (James McAvoy).

The Beast, Kevin’s most violent and dangerous alter-ego, has been feeding on those who he believes have never felt real pain. He’s murdered several more teenagers in the time since we met him in Split but finally, David Dunn, known in the media as ‘The Overseer,’ for reasons never determined, has a lead on The Horde. David has tracked Kevin's location with the help of his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), to an empty factory in Philadelphia.

The confrontation between David and The Beast is cut short by the arrival of police and a doctor, Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson). How did the police find them? Your guess is as good as the movie’s guess, as the movie offers no notion of how the police got there. How they got there with the one doctor in the world who has created a machine that can stop the superhuman qualities of Kevin and David, even though they had no idea where or who they were, is one of many contrivances of the idiot plot of Glass.

David and Kevin are taken to a psychiatric hospital where, waiting for them, unwittingly, is Mr. Glass. It seems that Dr. Staple has a very particular specialty: people who believe they are superheroes. She believes that the three men are delusional and sets out to prove to them their seemingly superhuman abilities can be explained through science. Naturally, Elijah Price, the ultimate ‘True Believer’ won’t be easily convinced.

The trailer for Glass spoils the fact that Mr. Glass and The Horde/Kevin become a team and that David and The Beast will go head to head in the yard of the hospital. One thing the trailer doesn’t tell you is how cheap and unfocused these scenes are. The final act of Glass is reminiscent of Shyamalan’s The Village, a film where the final act completely destroys what was not a bad movie until that point. Glass is bad throughout but the final fight does manage to make things worse. 

Glass isn’t that bad headed to the third act, it's relatively watchable, and then things go completely off the rails. In his attempt to recapture past glory as the king of the ‘Twist,’ director M. Night Shyamalan packs a ludicrous number of twists into the third act of Glass. There are so many twists at the end of Glass that it becomes downright exhausting. It’s as if Shyamalan was so desperate to fool us that he hedged his bets and put in as much craziness as he could think of in order to convince us that at least one of these twists would legitimately surprise us.

I mentioned that Glass was cheap and boy howdy, for a movie that is a sequel to a pair of blockbusters, this movie looks as if it were a Sweded version of a sequel to two blockbusters. Glass has one location for the most part and while it promises a big showdown at a high profile location, that location is revealed as CGI that somehow looks like a below average matte painting. The biggest twist in Glass is how M. Night Shyamalan turned a blockbuster movie into a cheap, forgettable failure. 

The number of corners cut in the making of Glass are rather shocking. The makeup used in many scenes is below average for even a modestly budgeted movie and the costumes are shockingly low rent. The production is stunningly mediocre and reflects the fact that Shyamalan no longer carries favor of a major studio, or studio budget. The former blockbuster director is now in the strictly low rent district, working with indie outlet Blumhouse, home of cheap, shlocky horror movies. 

No one was more excited for Glass than I was. I was endlessly excited for this movie. I ignored how the trailer appeared to reveal important plot points. I ignored the cheesy lines made just for the trailer. I was completely blind to these flaws out of fealty to my love for Split and Unbreakable. Glass was going to have to fail so remarkably for me to dislike it. The failure of Glass would have to be undeniable and complete and it truly is. Glass is undeniably terrible. 

Movie Review: The Sentinel

The Sentinel (2006) 

Directed by Clark Johnson 

Written by George Nolfi 

Starring Michael Douglas, Eva Longoria, Kiefer Sutherland, Kim Basinger 

Release Date April 21st, 2006 

Published April 20th, 2006

Michael Douglas projects an image of class. At sixty his stately handsomeness has an air of wisdom and strength. And yet, in his films Douglas rarely plays any character of true wisdom or class. In fact the word crass is a far better signifier of Douglas's characters than class. Look at his resume. From Fatal Attraction to Wall Street to Basic Instinct to Disclosure to his best film Wonder Boys and now his latest effort the action thriller, The Sentinel, Douglas has a penchant for characters whose penis functions ahead of his brain. It's a pattern that only grows creepier with age. When do Douglas characters start thinking with their heads instead of their pants, the guy is 60 for crying out loud.

In The Sentinel Douglas stars as Secret Service Agent Pete Garrison who once took a bullet for President Reagan. Pete has lived off this fading glory for years although it has done him little good in rising through the ranks of the service where he currently resides on the detail of the First Lady (Kim Basinger). Actually it's not a bad gig for Pete who happens to be boffing the first lady behind the Prez's back. Yeah! In a plot that makes Murder At 1600 look like Shakespeare, Douglas's secret service agent finds his affair with the first lady about to be exposed unless he can track down a terrorist group planning to assassinate the President (David Rasche).

Pete is being framed for the assassination plot by a mastermind so obvious that if you haven't identified him simply from the cast list you are not paying close enough attention. Here's a hint, it's not Kiefer Sutherland. He plays Secret Service Investigator Dave Breckinridge who is assigned to apprehend Pete Garrison after he is implicated in the assassination plot. Pete and Dave have history, Pete may or may not have been sleeping with Dave's wife. Thankfully Breckinridge is the extremely by the book type who does not allow such personal details to cloud his judgement. He also has the help of a new rookie partner, Jill Marin (Eva Longoria), who happens to have trained under Garrison.

Part Murder at 1600, part The Fugitive, and all ugh!!! The Sentinel is a creepy mess of crass commercial filmmaking from a director whose career is marked by some terrific work on the small screen and just awful work on the big screen. Clark Johnson started as an actor on TV's Homicide before moving behind the camera on that show and then on The West Wing, The Shield and Soul Food. His first big screen credit was the TV adaptation SWAT which was, at best, mainstream commercial schlock and at worst yet another dimwitted attempt to create a profitable franchise based on perceived nostalgia .

Johnson's work on The Sentinel is just utter nonsense. Johnson seems completely unaware of just how predictable his mystery is and just plows ahead with one lame action set piece after another on his way to a happy ending. Kiefer Sutherland, in his first major big screen role since he started on TV's best thriller 24, delivers a surprisingly strong performance given the circumstances. It helps that Breckinridge is not far removed from his Jack Bauer. That commanding presence and slight hint of crazy behind the eyes marks both Bauer and Breckinridge and who knows, may just be part of Kiefer the man.

As for Douglas, this aging lothario whose penis constantly leads him into trouble act is getting stale and creepy. How much longer are we to believe that every woman he has sex with is going to get him in serious trouble. He has an Oscar, lead actor in Wall Street, but unlike his father, Kirk Douglas, whose shadow has proven inescapable no matter how much money Michael makes, he's never had a "Lust For Life", a "Spartacus" or a "Bad and The Beautiful". Michael has never made an undeniable screen classic that will be remembered forever.

Would anyone really want to be remembered for Basic Instinct? And even that Oscar for Wall Street was more than a little shaky, it's not the lead performance in that movie and hindsight unkindly reflects how this was as much a win for the performance as for industry people liking Michael Douglas. Michael Douglas has many more films to make and plenty of time to find that timeless classic performance but until he does he is going to be the creepy old guy whose dick does all of his thinking for him. Not a great legacy.

Movie Review Girl With a Pearl Earring

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2004) 

Directed by Peter Webber 

Written by Olivia Hetreed 

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Essie Davis 

Release Date January 16th, 2004 

Published January 15th, 2004 

A surprising amount of information is known about master painter Johannes Vermeer. He was born, raised, and lived his entire life in Delft in the Netherlands. He married in 1653, had 12 children and created 35 works of art that have managed to survive to this day. His most well-known and well-regarded painting is The Girl With A Pearl Earring. The film inspired by that painting is a fictionalized account of the life of the girl who inspired the masterwork.

Scarlett Johannsen stars as Griet, a handmaiden sent to work in the home of the artist Vermeer played by Colin Firth. The master painter has gained a good reputation and the unending regard of a wealthy patron Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson). It is Van Ruijven that makes Vermeer and his family's lifestyle possible by buying each of his paintings. It's not a perfect relationship; Van Ruijven is troubled by the length of time it takes the artist to complete his work, and Vermeer is uncomfortable with his patron’s demanding commissions.

Griet comes to work for the Vermeer family and immediately catches the eye of Van Rutjien. Charged with cleaning the artist’s studio, she also catches the eye of the artist but not entirely the way you might think. The relationship between Griet and Vermeer has tension but it remains chaste for the most part. Nevertheless Vermeer's wife Catharina (Essie Davis) is endlessly suspicious of the relationship.

That relationship is stressed further when Van Ruijven commissions Vermeer to paint Griet for his private collection. Van Ruijven has a history of sleeping with Vermeer's models, a scandalous series of affairs that the painter and his family are forced to cover up from Van Ruijven's wife. Handling most of the cover up is Catharina's mother, Maria Thins (Judy Parfitt), who acted as Vermeer's agent. Griet is able to avoid the advances of Van Ruijven but her problems don't end there as her modeling must be kept from Vermeer's wife.

The drama of Girl With A Pearl Earring is somewhat thin by modern standards. In the day and age of Monica Lewinsky and the tabloid exploits of the British Royal family, social standing is a rather quaint concern. The tension between Griet and Catharina is undermined a great deal by the fragile and passionless performance by Essie Davis. Her whining about the handmaiden wearing her pearl earring doesn't register the impact that I'm sure screenwriter Olivia Hetreed intended. That may be about the writer not establishing the symbolism of the earrings, but mostly it's Davis's performance that fails the material. The performance needs a little more life and energy. 

Colin Firth also fails, but that is because he is badly miscast as Vermeer. Wearing one of the least convincing wigs of all time, Firth's very British stiff upper lip betrays the bohemian artist type he is supposed to be playing. His face is a cold mask that communicates little inner life. Firth's Vermeer takes no joy in his work, seems to live in a constant funk, and never shows the potency that was obvious in the life of the real Vermeer who turned out 35 impressive works and 12 children.

The film's bright spot is Scarlett Johannsen whose gorgeous saucer eyes communicate a rich inner life that is fascinating with no need for words. Indeed it is a mostly wordless performance; Johannsen's Griet is a silent servant who always follows orders. Things happen around her and she merely tries to do her duty without making waves. That may not sound exciting, but with Johannsen's wonderfully expressive face it is truly fascinating. Like the characters surrounding her, you desperately want to know what is going on inside her and yet she hardly says a word.

First time feature director Peter Webber, who's wife Olivia Hetreed adapted the script, makes the bold choice not to use voiceover. A bold choice because Griet, the main character, barely speaks a word. Most writers and directors would use voiceover to fill in dramatic plot points but Webber and Hetreed trust their star to communicate what is needed with her eyes and they got exactly what they needed from Johannsen.

This is Johannsen's second star-making performance in less than 12 months--the first was an even better performance in Lost In Translation. This is both a career blessing and a curse. A blessing because few actresses get the opportunity to give two terrific performances in one year, a curse because she will have to compete against herself for Oscar nominations. Either performance is deserving of recognition but her performance in Girl With A Pearl Earring is certainly more complicated because the film surrounding it isn't as good as she is.

Movie Review Gigli

Gigli (2003) 

Directed by Martin Brest 

Written by Martin Brest 

Starring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Bartha 

Release Date August 1st, 2003 

Published August 1st, 2003 

In Hollywood history, there have been some monumental disasters. MGM's failure to recognize that the musical had run it's course led to the massive bombs Kiss Me Kate and Paint Your Wagon. The vanity of stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman lead to the disastrous release of Ishtar Ishtar. And, of course, the greatest disaster of all time the, the costliest bomb in Hollywood history is 1963's Cleopatra.

With history in mind, where does the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez disaster Gigli rank in this pantheon? Though it wasn't as costly as Cleopatra or as awful as Ishtar, Gigli is remarkable for taking two very appealing actors and turning them into two of the worst, most annoying characters ever put to film. Gigli somehow cost more than 75 million dollars to make and you can't see any of that money on the screen. If you told me that there was evidence that Gigli was the result of a The Producers style scam betting on its failure, I would believe you. 

The film's title, Gigli, is pronounced Gee-ly, or as  Ben Affleck explains in an embarrassing voiceover, his character’s name rhymes with Really, as in really, really dull. Affleck is Larry Gigli, a low level mob enforcer who, when we first meet him, is explaining to a potential victim what might happen if you put a human being in an industrial size clothes dryer and put it on permanent press. Whether this monologue is supposed to be humorous or menacing is a perfect example of the numerous problems with the film, which can't decide on a tone or genre. The monologue lands in a place where it isn't funny or menacing. 

From there, we move into the film’s plot. The story of Gigli centers on Larry kidnapping the mentally challenged brother of a federal prosecutor. As played by Justin Bartha, the character of Brian is yet another of those idealized Hollywood versions of the mentally handicapped, who exhibits his mentally challenged qualities with tics and through an obsession with the TV show Baywatch, which he calls 'The Baywatch.' 

The kidnapping goes quite smoothly but Larry's mob bosses don't think he can handle the job. Enter an independent mob contractor named Ricki (Lopez). Ricki's job is to keep an eye on Larry and the kid and be Larry's love interest. Of course, that is complicated by the fact that Ricki is a lesbian. Nevertheless, the film grinds forward on the premise that Larry is so charming that even a lesbian might be intrigued enough to give him a try. UGH! 

Once Ricki is introduced, we are treated to a series of exasperating and incomprehensible scenes featuring some of the worst dialogue in film history. The lines that have gotten most of the attention are the lead up to the big sex scene. For some reason when Ricki decides, at least temporarily, to switch teams, she says to Larry, quote "It's Turkey time, gobble gobble". What in God's name does that mean? Is it a reference to oral sex? Turkey's don't gobble, that's just our closest approximation to what we think Turkey's sound like. I'm over-thinking this, but still. What? Now, in fairness, there does appear to be a scene missing that might have given context to that dialogue but even so I can't imagine any scene that would make that dialogue sexy.

Another dialogue piece that has received notice is a pair of monologues celebrating the male and female genitalia. The monologues are well thought out and if delivered correctly could have been witty, insightful, even sexy. However, as delivered by Affleck and Lopez and contextualized by director Martin Brest, they are flat, ineffectual filler. Affleck delivers his monologue through the single worst accent in film history and Lopez delivers hers with an air of disaffection that connotes boredom when it's supposed to evoke, at the least, lust. It doesn't help that Brest lights the scene as if it was a rehearsal setup and employs a score that tries desperately to manipulate the audience into giving a damn.

Speaking of the score, it's one of the classic signs of a bad movie when you begin to make not of the film score. As employed by director Martin Brest, the score of Gigli helps to muddle the film’s tone and confuse its genre classification. Is this supposed to be a comedy, a romantic comedy, a drama? Determining a film’s genre has never been important to me. I believe a good film transcends any classification. However, when a film is so confused with its intentions it helps to be able to fall back on its own classification as a way of determining the director's intent. With Gigli, it's completely unclear what anyone intended this movie to be. 

I didn't want to believe that Ben Affleck could make a film as bad as everyone said this was. Affleck has been a favorite of mine for a while thanks to his stellar work with Kevin Smith and especially his self-effacing humor on the commentary tracks of the Smith film DVDs. Those commentary tracks are as funny as the movies they are about and Affleck is especially funny. So watching Gigli is that much more disheartening. Say what you will about Daredevil or Bounce, I liked both of those films, and Phantoms is at least good for a cheap laugh. Gigli has no redeeming values at all, it's simply horrendous and so is Ben's performance in it.

Sadly, a terrible performance is nothing new for Jennifer Lopez who seems to be settling into mediocrity like a comfortable sweater. Her ineffectual pop tunes and droning romantic comedies like Maid In Manhattan are the perfect primer for Gigli. I cannot be surprised to find her picking up another paycheck as she ineffectually contorts to whatever is written on the scripted page, no matter how insane the script may be. After her work in Out Of Sight and The Cell, I thought maybe she had something but since becoming a superstar J-Lo has decided to coast on her looks and image and simply pick up a paycheck.

As for Director Martin Brest, well God only knows what he was thinking as he put this mess down on paper and then on the screen. Brest hasn't made a good film since, well has he actually made a good film? Beverly Hills Cop was good but likely would not have been without the whirling dervish performance by Eddie Murphy. Then there is Scent Of A Woman, the highly overrated film that won Al Pacino an Oscar for best actor. Coming as it did at a time when sympathy for Pacino was running quite high, people unwilling to question Pacino allowed that film to skate on Pacino's reputation and forgave its many flaws. And how can anyone forget Brest's most recent travesty, Meet Joe Black, in which Brest took the very charismatic Brad Pitt and managed to suck out every last bit of charisma in him.

So maybe the pre-release buzz that focused on Affleck and Lopez's offscreen romance should have paid more attention to the director who may skate again thanks to his being overlooked in favor of his stars. It is Martin Brest who put this mess together and directed these completely misguided performances. And yet, it doesn't appear that Brest will take the brunt of the blame for it. Which he should, this thing is his fault. Forget about Ben and Jen and the tabloid nonsense for a moment and turn your scorn toward the director of this mess. Ben and Jen aren't blameless but Martin Brest is responsible for their humiliation.