Flops can represent an opportunity. Such was the case with a film starring Ben Affleck, which was torn by critics and pointedly ignored by audiences. We’re talking about the gangster comedy Risky Love aka Gigli, in which he appeared in 2003 with his then (and now) partner Jennifer Lopez. Of the Peak of Bennifer mania went down in the annals as one of the biggest flops in recent film history, caused malicious laughter in the press and was still possibly the best thing that could have happened to Ben Affleck.
For Ben Affleck, the Gigli flop was also a gift
Reactions to Gigli, however, have been anything but cakewalk for the eventual Batman star. In an interview with pal Matt Damon on Entertainment Weekly in January, he described how it feels to be at the mockery of the people to become:
The funny name, the Jennifer Lopez romance, and how overused it was, it was kind of a perfect storm. […] I can now understand how people perceived me at the time and imagined this person as an immature fellow who was proud or had too much. It provoked some negative feelings with the people across from me.
Check out the trailer for Gigli starring Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck:
Risky Love – Trailer (English)
And further:
There’s this facet of people that I could see that was sad and tough, it was depressing and really made me question some things, to be disappointed and to develop a lot of self-doubt.The later Batman star drew the right conclusions from the flop
However, it’s not failures that define a career, it’s how you deal with them. This is where Gigli came in at the right place for Affleck’s career. In the same conversation he stated:
If it weren’t for the reactions to Gigli, I probably wouldn’t have decided, ‘I actually have no other way out than directing‘ which turned out to be the true love of my professional life.
In retrospect, Ben Affleck Gigli can take positives from this:
As for that is it a gift. And I met Jennifer, the relationship with her is really significant in my life.
Affleck and Lopez met on the set of Gigli in 2002 and were a couple for 18 months. Four years after the flop, Affleck’s directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, was released to critical acclaim.
In 2013 he won the Oscar for Best Picture for Argo. He has been dating Lopez again since April 2021. The two got married on July 16, almost 20 years after their first engagement.
Podcast: The best streaming films of 2022 on Netflix, Disney+ and Co.
In the latest edition of our podcast Streamgegefuehl we take a look back at the streaming films of the year so far. Netflix, Disney+ and Co. have outbid each other with elaborate productions. But which of the films are really successful? In the podcast we talk about our top 10 best streaming movies of 2022.
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The streaming year was very varied in the film sector. A red panda has thrown Toronto into chaos while a princess struggled from the top floor of a tower to the ground floor. We were also able to experience the first moon landing through children’s eyes and received an amusing Jackass encore.