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Disregard the negative buzz: Gigli is woeful but not disastrous. Ben Affleck’s Larry Gigli ("pronounced like really with a G") is a hit man assigned to kidnap and house-sit the DA’s simpleton brother (Justin Bartha) so the DA won’t proceed against Larry’s mob boss. Larry’s handler (a bug-eyed Lenny Venito) doesn’t trust him, so he sends in gorgeous back-up Ricki (Jennifer Lopez). She’s a lesbian, he’s a wanna-be player, and because the apartment is so small, they have to share a bed.

Written and directed by Martin Brest (Scent of a Woman and Midnight Run), Gigli is a banal exercise in vanity. Yes, Ben looks fetching, and yes, J. Lo gets to showcase her posterior, but the fashion shoot gets tired fast. Their big love scene is tepid and gets upstaged by the inane foreplay banter about turkey ("Time to eat. Gobble, gobble.") and "heterolingus." Christopher Walken and Al Pacino lend their mugs to this embarrassment. The one high point is Bartha, whose idiot savant is Rain Man infused with Eminem. (124 minutes)