Product: The Bachelor (1999)
Rating: 1.0
Oh! The horror, the horror!
Accckkk! What a venal, stupid, stupid film! What a tragic waste of high-quality character actors!With the likes of Asner, Holbrook, Cromwell, one would have hoped for something entertaining, but even these three (and whoever it was they got to pretend to be Oliver Platt) are incapable of overcoming the feeble script and overwhelming aura of vapidity emanating from the Boy Wonder himself, Chris O'Donnell.The problem with O'Donnell is that, as an actor with this part, he has to convince the viewer that he is commitment-phobic. In order to do so, he has to overcome his very public persona as the most domesticated, least dangerous man in young Hollywood today. He is the anti-Christian Slater. Forget Michael J. Fox, this man has no Elvis in him.The beginning of the movie compares bachelorhood to being a "mustang." A rather pathetic comparison, and it doesn't work -- O'Donnell seems more like a puppy that just is eager to please.O'Donnell doesn't deserve all the blame. The screenplay is a lackadaisical hash. The direction is, at best, standard. Somehow, the sequence involving an army of brides marauding through San Francisco, chasing after Chris O'Donnell (one hopes for a bacchanal rending of the flesh), loses its potential for giddy absurdity. Renée Zellweger is adequate in her stomping and frustration with her boyfriend, but it is surely not enough to compensate.A couple of bright spots: An academic shoots down O'Donnell's proposal, leaving one to wonder how they ended up dating each other in the first place. Brooke Shields has a great cameo as a desperate but snotty socialite who is tricked into accepting O'Donnell's offer. As she gradually learns what her future entails, she gets cold feet and recovers, each time her panic growing.Anybody hoping for top-notch comic timing, believable acting, a clever plot, with witty leads, should look somewhere else. It's just not a very good romance when you just hope that the heroine would get a life and that the hero gets run over by a streetcar.