“I just don’t accept that’s a bad film”: the 2002 movie Guy Ritchie tried to defend until he realised he couldn’t
There should be a rule, and it’s actually surprising it doesn’t exist already, that completely prevents lovestruck Hollywood couples from being indulged to the point where they get to make their own film together and release it into the world. And it’s a rule that Madonna and Guy Ritchie could have benefitted immensely from back in 2002.
Come to think of it, that’s only a year before another outstanding contender for my newly-invented celebrity rule was released, as Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck made the frankly risible Gigli, which currently sports a whacking great Rotten Tomatoes rating of six per cent, and that’s generous, honestly. But back to Madge and Guy, who in 2002 were probably the most high-profile couple in the world, which meant, of course, nobody would say no to them.
They first didn’t say no to them in 2001, actually, which was when Ritchie directed his Mrs’ video for the song ‘What It Feels Like for a Girl’, and filled it with so much violence that it promptly got banned by MTV, who only played it once.
That wasn’t warning enough, however, and he then directed her again in a short advertising film for BMW with Clive Owen, which was woeful, but worse was to come the next year when the loved-up pair decided to remake an Italian film from 1974 called Swept Away.
With a plot involving a wealthy socialite getting stuck on a desert island, the film had a production spend of around $10million, which was punchy for a film nobody had any interest in watching, and so it proved, as it brought back less than a tenth of that at the box office, with critics focusing on the fact that the lead actor, Madonna, couldn’t act her way out of a wet Prada bag, and the supporting cast, including an early role for Elizabeth Banks, had no chance of saving things.
Ritchie, who, it should be said at this point, is actually a brilliant film director, did his level best in the early days to defend himself, his film, and his then-wife, which is understandable, because Madonna seems like she could be pretty damn scary at times.
But soon enough, he was aware the tide of public opinion was firmly against him, and a couple of years after its release, when The Guardian asked him if he thought it would be better without Madonna in it, he said, “Um, well… It’s impossible not to take her fame out of the equation, and I suppose I was incredibly naive about that”.
He then explained further, “It was a very low-budget film, and it was designed as a very small thing, but there’s no such thing when she’s involved. So… I just don’t accept that’s a bad film. It’s exactly the film I intended to make.” Which is all very honourable, but unfortunately, that only works if the film he intended to make was a fucking awful one.
At least as time went on, he began to understand the reality of Swept Away, describing it as ‘shit’, although he still maintained that the critics’ quite correct slagging of the film left him shaking his head. It is quite comfortably his worst-rated movie, although the execrable Revolver from 2005 (Jason Statham in a hairpiece) and the unfollowable King Arthur: Legend of the Sword run it close. Plus, it did get nominated for several awards, just that those happened to be five Golden Raspberries.
