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Psychotic Reactions
-- John Shea
31 July, 2003
I'm going to talk some serious spoilers today folks. So if you don't want to know too much about Gigli, go away now. Then again, reading this might be awfully helpful if you're looking forward to the movie. The press has finally been let near Gigli and the response wasn't good. Massive walk outs have been reported at multiple screenings. Why? People are shocked to discover what sort of movie this is or more specifically, what sort of movie this isn't. It isn't a romantic comedy, despite what Sony's marketing department might lead you to believe. I briefly mentioned the movie's script a couple weeks back and said I rather liked it. That had a lot to do with discovering it wasn't even vaguely the saccharine love story I had been fearing. Talk of the Lopez/Affleck romance was almost impossible to miss and I sure as hell tried. Because of that high profile romance though, the public would be expecting a pretty heated romance. This is not a story of romance. This a story of a hitman hired to kidnap the mentally handicapped brother of a federal prosecutor. The job is so important that a second professional is brought in to keep an eye on the first. That's your couple folks. I hinted at this before, but since every other media outlet blabbed, I can point out that in the ads, when J-Lo tells Ben that he isn't her type, she means that men in general aren't her type. That's right, Ben is Chasing Amy again.
I said in my earlier article that this movie does two things romantic comedies just don't do. The first was the lesbian angle, which tends to kill the romance between a man and a woman. The second is kill off one of the leads. The script (and original cut of the film) showed Affleck's character being gunned down. This unsurprisingly went over badly with test audiences who were probably already a little cranky that one half of the big romantic couple played for the other team. It went so badly in fact that a new ending was shot. Martin Brest was so delighted with the new ending to his film that he reportedly came close to punching out a producer from Revolution Studios at the second round of test screenings. That original ending was my favorite part of the script because it was gutsy and flew in the face of Hollywood tradition. It was a reasonable conclusion to the story instead of the more forced and less logical traditional Hollywood ending. It said something about the character and the life of crime he led. Presumably the new ending strips all of that out. Too bad. Catering to the masses doesn't necessarily make the movie better.
The movie does something else a romantic comedy shouldn't do. It's violent. There are two scenes that are in both the script and final film. I didn't comment on them earlier because the way they were written didn't indicate the gory manner in which they were shot. Gore is fine in a mob film but not in romantic comedies, which you might recall, is how this film is being marketed.
Now I haven't yet seen the movie so I can't say if it's as bad as people are saying. Generally speaking, audiences react badly when given a movie that differs wildly from what they were expecting. This is exactly the problem faced by Sony with this film. Based on a highly publicized celebrity romance, they opted to play up the film's nominally romantic side in ads and trailers. I'm guessing that the film will be huge when it hits theaters Friday due to its very high profile and significant curiosity. This summer I've talked a lot about second week drop-offs but this is a film that could launch talk of second day drop-offs. Word of mouth could be lethal to this movie. Miramax is starting to look prescient for moving Jersey Girl, the Kevin Smith movie which also features the couple, to next year. If this movie bombs with the ferocity now being expected, projects featuring one or both of the Beniffer monster could get hammered with fallout. Or maybe the press is just doing a Chicken Little routine and audiences will dig a snarky mobster comedy with high profile stars and cameos. Whatever the case, the lesson you need to take from this is that I sounded the warning that this film isn't what anyone expected weeks before the mainstream press. I love it when I'm right. Oh yeah, it's probably also worth noting that pulling a bait and switch on unsuspecting movie audiences is a recipe for disaster. But as long as you remember that I was right, everything is fine.
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