Product: The Bachelor (1999)
Rating: 5.0
Gary Sinyor's Best
I liked the movie he made when he was first starting out, as a novice director, LEON THE PIG FARMER (don't let the awful title put you off). Of course LTPF is a very different kettle of fish than THE BACHELOR, but both movies exhibit a very vibrant borrowing from silent film and its subtleties. Sinyor also directed STIFF UPPER LIPS, the parody movie that gave stuffy Merchant-Ivory movies a good shaking up. PIG FARMER is out on DVD but only in the UK, in the meantime let's go to THE BACHELOR and see what's up. Well, it didn't do well at the box office, and studio moguls blamed Sinyor for its failure; what a blow for him, and he hasn't been given the chance to make another movie in the six years since then! (Although happily BOB THE BUTLER will be coming out hopefully by the end of the year, the movie that re-unites Sinyor with his BACHELOR star Brooke Shields.Chris O'Donnell was doing very well, too, and then along came THE BACHELOR and a few other flops and before long he was regarded as box office poison. There was something about him that perhaps people didn't like, shame too, because he's definitely capable and he's also ready to step up and make a fool of himself for a laugh, something not every actor is willing to do. All these things combine in THE BACHELOR, a comedy romp set in San Francisco in which Chris plays the heir to a fortune of $120 million dollars, but there's a catch, he must marry within 24 hours, and the woman he loves, Renee Zellweger, isn't ready to say yes. So he proposes to a lot of women during the course of the movie. Naturally they all think he's crazy. This has its origin in the old silent classic 7 CHANCES, with Buster Keaton, but it provides a lot of opportunities for some talented actresses. Look out for wonderful Stacy Edwards, the deaf heroine of IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, in a lighter vein here! But the show belongs to Chris O'Donnell, and to a lesser extent Renee Zellweger in whose career this is only a blip. There she is winning Oscar after Oscar, and meanwhile Chris O'Donnell is making independent films after a long post-Bachelor hiatus. What a world!Anyhow if you live in San Francisco, add another star to THE BACHELOR because you'll be proud we live in such a cool, beautiful city.However you might deduct a star because the "extras" on this DVD are sub-par. You know there must be dozens of deleted bloopers from Mariah Carey's scenes alone, and yet for this presentation we get nothing!