Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman has posted an essay about the iconic pairing of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, formerly known as Bennifer or, if you will, “B-Lo”, and their recent Las Vegas marriage and especially Gigli, their 2003 box-office bomb that was directed by Martin Brest.
But what got my attention was the following passage: “And, of course, just as Liz and Dick had a famous bad movie to launch them, so did J. Lo and Ben. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had begun their torrid love affair on the set of Cleopatra in 1961, and by the time the movie came out, in 1963, it seemed to be all about the two of them.
“The same can be said for Gigli, the infamous debacle of a 2003 romantic comedy. Lopez and Affleck first got involved during the shooting of it, in 2002, and by the time the film came out, in August 2003, what was happening on screen seemed a mere footnote to the real-life dramatic series of their romance.
“Cleopatra was an iconic movie, a four-hour spectacle of ancient glitz bloated with expense and designed to lure audiences back from their pesky new loyalty to the small screen. Nothing about Gigli, when it came out, looked especially iconic; it wasn’t showy or expensive, and it was given such a rude collective backhand by the critics that it died a quick death.”
HE response: I don’t think it’s quite fair to dismiss Cleopatra as a “bad movie.” It’s a slog to sit through, of course, but it’s so handsomely and expensively produced and Leon Shamroy‘s cinematography is luscious eye candy, and Rex Harrison’s Julius Caesar is crisp and rousing, I feel, especially during the opening 15 or 20 minutes, and Roddy McDowell’s Ceasar Augustus is easily the best adult performance he ever gave and Martin Landau’s Ruffio is very good also, and even Burton and Taylor have their moments. And you can’t fault those first 15 or 20 minutes, and the opening credit sequence is wonderful. So you can’t just dismiss it as a “bad movie,” although it obviously has pacing and story-tension problems.
Posted on 3.2.13: “The rap against Cleopatra is that it’s stately, slow-moving, oppressively talky, etc. But the opening credits — black font, a series of faded wall paintings, Alex North‘s music — are arresting, and then fascinating during a 20-second passage. North’s score slips into a somber mood and then builds into slight fanfare as the final painting becomes more and more vivid in stages, and finally transitions into 70mm live action.
“There’s a portion of 15 or so minutes after the credits with Harrison and Landau and the rest that’s fairly efficient, and then — about 17 or 18 minutes in — Elizabeth Taylor arrives, and the film soon becomes draggy, and then tedious, and then occasionally suffocating. Then it rebounds in the final hour…somewhat.”