Product: The Bachelor (1999)
Rating: 1.0
1 star or less
Don't watch this movie. It's simply so stupid that nothing can save it from itself. and it is as bad as the other 1 star reviews say. (I will mention the one highlight, Brook Shields later.) A point I'd like to raise is that the movie is nauseatingly sexist. I'm pleasantly amazed by what a long way we've come since 1999. The premise is that men want to roam free like mustangs, whereas women want to lasso them as if they had no life, other than to get married, and as if men had no purpose other than, well, what? Oh, to compulsively chase after women. This is what I don't get about this idea: How do we square men, "free as mustangs" with men in the thrall of women-chasing? How free are you, if you are driven like that? This could have been funny if it had been dark. That would have required different actors, screen writer and director. This plot idea gets irreparably muddled with another plot idea, that the lead has to marry immediately in order to come into his inheritance. What a mess. I've yet to see a re-make that works. This story might have been OK with Buster Keaton in the original. I haven't seen it. It's hard, or perhaps impossible to update social commentary, which this movie desperately attempt and fails.I paid 50 cents for it in a yard sale. But the really good thing is that I was working on a large Photoshop file that took a long time load every time I "saved," or "transformed." It gave me something to keep me from getting impatient. I was also able to fast-forward through the worst scenes. Great feature, that. As to Brook Shields. I've never seen her better. It's astounding how much an actor can do in a small scene that one would think offers nothing to bite into. I was delighted with the film for the entire duration of her scene. If I were a director I would want to make a movie built just around the character of Buckley as played Shields. She was brilliant!