Let’s go back to 2003! A time when the career of Ben Affleck became known for more about who he was dating (at the time Jennifer Lopez) and a series of misses he had as a performer. During the days of “Bennifer”, a name given to the duo by the media when they were seeing each other, Affleck saw the release of Daredevil, Gigli, Paycheck, Jersey Girl, and Surviving Christmas. None of these films were well-received but out of all of them, Gigli became a target of media jokes and scrutiny, and so did Ben Affleck. Headlined by Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, the film was a huge commercial and critical failure and it’s widely considered to be one of the worst movies ever made. The film may have been an inconvenient blunder at the time, but Affleck says today that film is a blessing in disguise.
During a chat with his buddy Matt Damon for Entertainment Weekly, the actor opened up at length about his body of work. Affleck took the time to discuss Gigli and he was surprised so many people had negative things to say about it since the box office figures show not many people saw it. He doesn’t think it’s a great movie necessarily and agrees it “doesn’t work” but he believes the media attention that Jennifer Lopez’s involvement brought made it more of a target:
“The truth about that movie and what it taught me was how much everything around a movie sort of dictates the way people see it. But for being a movie that’s such a famous bomb and a disaster, very few people actually saw the movie. It doesn’t work, by the way. It’s a sort of horse’s head in a cow’s body. And the studio at the time, because I had begun having this relationship with Jennifer Lopez, which was selling a lot of magazines and appeared to generate a lot of enthusiasm, they just predictably latched onto, ‘They want a romantic comedy. They want the two of them together. More of that!’ And it was just like that SNL sketch.”
Affleck says signing up for the project was easy because he was a fan of director Martin Brest’s previous work. He also points to the fact that there is still “wonderful stuff” in there, even if the movie isn’t perfect. The actor goes on to say that he’s had films bomb harder than Gigli and that its failure is not a reflection of Brest’s work. That being said, its negative reception did hit Affleck hard at the time:
“It’s just that it became a story in and of itself. The funny name, the Jennifer Lopez romance and overexposure of that, it was kind of a perfect storm. And I remember talking to Marty the Friday it came out and I was like it’s just spectacular, it’s a tsunami, it couldn’t be worse. This is as bad as it gets… I can see now how people looked at me and thought of this person as some callow frat guy who’s cavalier, or has too much. It engendered a lot of negative feelings in people about me. There’s that aspect of people that I got to see that was sad and hard, it was depressing and really made me question things and feel disappointed and have a lot of self-doubt.”
As with most things like this, time away from it can bring perspective. Affleck says he’s more fond of Gigli nowadays and the fiasco that surrounded the film is what ultimately led him to direct, where he found a career resurgence and great success. The movie also allowed him to meet Jennifer Lopez and, even though they split up during that time amid the media fiasco surrounding their relationship, the two have recently gotten back together and things seem like they’re better than ever for Affleck:
“If the reaction to Gigli hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have ultimately decided, ‘I don’t really have any other avenue but to direct movies,’ which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life. So in those ways, it’s a gift. And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life.”
In Gigli, Larry Gigli (Ben Affleck) is assigned by a crime boss to kidnap the brother of a prominent district attorney. A beautiful woman known only as Ricki (Jennifer Lopez) is sent to stay with him to make sure he doesn’t mess up the job. The film is one of the most expensive bombs in box office history, grossing a mere $7.2 million globally against a $54 million budget. The film earned a scathing 6% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes and it holds a 2.5/10 on IMDB. As of 2022, it’s also the last film that Martin Brest has directed.
What are YOUR thoughts on Ben Affleck and his work Gigli?