"Gigli" MOVIE OF THE YEAR!

I though Jaylo was a media darling??? Maybe they're realizing that she is lacking and deserves not to be where she is...Then again, they put her where she is... Hate/Love relationship???

 

Funny. I thought it ranked more like no. 2

 

It did pretty crappy!
http://jam.canoe.ca/JamMoviesBoxOffice/us.html

 

Who's to blame for "Gigli"

No one, apparently. It's just another day in show biz.

Dan C

http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20030805/D7SO22I80.html?PG=home&SEC=news

Aug 5, 5:27 PM (ET)

By DAVID GERMAIN

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The mob romp "Gigli" ended up a Hollywood disaster movie, yet stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez and most of their collaborators should emerge unscathed.

Losing big, it seems, is just part of the game called show business.

Hollywood heads generally don't roll over a single flop, even a turkey such as "Gigli." It had a dismal opening-weekend gross of $3.8 million - a pittance for a high-profile movie with a $54 million price tag.

Revolution Studios, which made "Gigli," and Sony Pictures, which distributed it, will end up losing about $30 million, while real-life sweethearts Affleck and Lopez lose a little face amid the movie's lousy reviews ("Unwatchable," according to Christy Lemire of The Associated Press).


"Nobody loses their job as a general proposition over one bomb," said Kim Masters, a film columnist for Esquire magazine.

If anyone pays the price it likely will be writer-director Martin Brest, who also served as co-producer and had the last word on the movie's final cut.

That's a rarity in tag-team Hollywood, where movies often have gaggles of credited producers, writers and executive producers, whose sheer numbers help insulate them from any blame.

Brest, who did not return phone calls seeking comment, is a choosy director who has made just five movies since his Hollywood debut with George Burns' 1979 picture "Going in Style."

He scored a huge hit with 1984's "Beverly Hills Cop," then had solid critical and commercial results from "Midnight Run" and "Scent of a Woman" before stumbling with the 1998 big-budget dud "Meet Joe Black" - his last movie before "Gigli."

"The one person who may have a hard time with their next project would be Martin Brest," said Chris Gardner, who covers the movie business for the trade paper The Hollywood Reporter. "A lot of it at this point will fall on his shoulders."

Brest feuded with Revolution founder Joe Roth over the movie's original downbeat conclusion, ultimately agreeing to reshoot the happy ending that was released.

Despite two misfires in a row, Brest's phone might keep ringing. A hit like "Beverly Hills Cop" has a long shelf life in Hollywood.

"People tend to fail upward in this business," said David Miller, an entertainment analyst with Sanders Morris Harris. "Half the game in this town, in the movie business, is not creating a hit film. It's getting a film made in the first place."

In the beginning, "Gigli" had a lot going for it, including two of the hottest movie stars in the business - who just happened to be engaged.

Starring Affleck as a hoodlum who falls for Lopez's lesbian mobster on a kidnapping assignment, it was meant as the sort of offbeat, "Get Shorty"-style tale that often clicks with audiences by defying Hollywood formula.

But trouble struck as the film lumbered through months of bad press and reports of conflict between Brest and his backers.

"It shows you no one filmmaker, star, producer, director or studio is immune to the vagaries of this business," said producer Peter Guber, head of Mandalay Entertainment and former studio boss at Sony. "What makes the business both exciting and anxiety-producing is that success and failure are millimeters apart."

Revolution blames tabloid gossip about Lopez and Affleck for overexposing the stars and undermining the movie's appeal. That rumor mill, compounded by "Gigli's" failure, also might bode ill for Lopez and Affleck's second collaboration, next year's romance "Jersey Girl."

With $20 million to $22 million in marketing costs on top of the production budget, Sony and Revolution spent about $75 million on "Gigli." Realizing the movie was on its way to tanking, the studios cut back on advertising at the last minute, figuring the money was better spent on other films.

Once revenue from overseas box office, TV and video are added, "Gigli" is expected to post a loss of $30 million to $35 million for Sony and Revolution - small change against Sony's billion-dollar-plus annual box-office revenue or the hundreds of millions Revolution movies will take in this year.

"Gigli's" rotten reception and the bad blood between the director and Roth could tag Brest as a problem filmmaker, making it tougher for him to find work in Hollywood.

Still, other directors have moved on to new successes after making bombs, among them Terry Gilliam, who rebounded with the "The Fisher King" and "Twelve Monkeys" after flopping with "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," and Mike Nichols, whose hits after 1975's lemon "The Fortune" include "Working Girl" and "The Birdcage."

Even Michael Cimino - director of "Heaven's Gate," the 1980 debacle that contributed to United Artists' collapse - landed a few directing jobs afterward.

It generally takes a string of failures before studios and production companies hunt for scapegoats. That often winds up being the marketing and publicity people charged with selling movies to audiences. Last year, MGM replaced key marketing executives after flopping with "Windtalkers,""Hart's War" and "Rollerball."

Studios generally roll with the punches, hoping hits offset flops. Sony is fresh off a monster year in 2002, paced by the blockbuster "Spider-Man."

Revolution and Sony scored with "Anger Management" and "Daddy Day Care." They hope their upcoming live-action "Peter Pan" and Julia Roberts'"Mona Lisa Smile" will help balance losses on "Gigli" and another recent stinker, "Hollywood Homicide."

"Gigli" is a "bump in the road. It's part of the business. Not everything can work," said Revolution partner Tom Sherak. "Could I sit here and blame somebody? I can, but I won't do that, because there's nobody to blame. We truly did everything we could to make the picture work."

 

Well, given it's current box office performance, I'm guessing it oughta be out on DVD in about 2 weeks.... Me, I'll wait for The Criterion Collection version - probably be out in a month....

 

Please don't wish that dreck on Criterion even in jest!

 

Sir - when yer this "bootylicious" (who the hell invented that word???) the world is yer oyster...

 

Um, no. They met on the set of Gigli.

Am I the only fan of "Selena"? It's a feel good hit of the summer!

 

Come on guys, it's really not nice to make fun of Ben and J-Lo's film or their romance. From what I hear it's true love and they will remain together forever.

Just like Liza and that guy she married...

 

I saw "Gigli" last night, and I have to say, it wasn't all bad. The performances were good (and I'm neither a J-Lo nor Ben fan by any means, nor, for that matter, of most celebrities). The script was extremely verbose, but wasn't a total waste, and the direction was good. You just have to realize that this is a parody of both buddy comedies and gangster films. No one could picture Ben Affleck as a gangster, but that's the whole point of the script-he is useless as a wannabe "made-guy", as he is essentially too decent to be ruthless. Jennifer Lopez is actually a pretty decent actress, and she and Ben do have a good chemistry together. Justin Bartha is the best one in the whole film-believeablity is the hallmark of good acting, to me, and he had the role of a mentally-disabled person down pat. The funniest scene was after Affleck is told by his boss to cut off his captive's thumb to send as a threatening gesture to the DA (the captive's older brother) in Los Angeles. Because he balks at cutting off the teenager's thumb, he sneaks into a hospital morgue with Bartha in tow. As he is removing the digit (or is it a finger?) with a plastic picnic knife, Bartha begins singing, apropos of nothing, "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot! Maybe my sense of humor is twisted, but I found that hilarious. If for nothing else than the fact it comes out of nowhere, and has nothing to do with what Affleck is doing (Bartha's character is obsessed with "Baywatch").
So, in the end, I had a pretty good time at the movie after all. Would I recommend it? No, not really, you have to have a warped sense of humor like I do to find it funny, and I think that everyone takes the film too seriously, as a "real" gangster picture, when in fact it's a brilliant spoof of the genre.