i came to an epiphany while watching the bachelor , an innocuous - enough - on - the - surface romantic comedy .
it 's not the sort of film in which one would expect to achieve any moment of clarity , but there it was nonetheless .
i sat there watching this marshmallow of a movie unfold when suddenly i realized what is so ridiculously wrong with the entire romantic comedy genre circa 1999 .
in a word , it 's the same thing that 's wrong with so many movies circa 1999 : writing .
more to the point , it 's the refusal to acknowledge that characterizations matter when you 're telling a story about a relationship .
the bachelor is merely the latest in a long line of films where we 're expected to get dewy - eyed over any pairing of attractive , pleasant people just because they 're attractive and pleasant .
in this particular case , attractive and pleasant exhibit a is jimmy shannon ( chris o'donnell ) , a single guy who has been watching his friends slowly but surely sucked into marriage .
it 's a scary notion for jimmy , even though he dearly loves attractive and pleasant exhibit b anne ( renee zellweger ) , his girlfriend of three years .
convinced despite his reservations that it 's time to " sh
* t or get off the pot , " jimmy proposes to anne -- very badly .
anne refuses , which leaves jimmy in a very odd position when his eccentric grandfather ( peter ustinov ) dies and leaves a very specific video will .
jimmy stands to inhereit $ 100 million if he is married by 6
: 05 p .
m .
on his 30th birthday , stays married for 10 years and produces a child .
there are only a couple of minor problems : 1 ) jimmy 's 30th birthday is the next day ; 2 ) anne is nowhere to be found , meaning jimmy has to find another willing bride from among his many ex - girlfriends .
it 's a wacky , brewster 's millions - esque premise ( acknowledged as such in one of the film 's better , more self - aware lines of dialogue ) , the kind where a shallow and materialistic guy learns what really matters .
at least that would be the case if jimmy were n't already a world - class altruist .
screenwriter steve cohen slides into the story an even more draconian condition in the will : if jimmy does n't get married , not only will he lose all the money , but the family billiard table buisness will be sold out from under him , costing hudreds of jobs .
from the outset , jimmy 's motivation is n't cash ; it 's the livelihoods of his devoted employees .
it 's almost embarrassing for his marital misgivings to play a role in the bachelor 's plot development .
by any human standard , the guy is impossibly selfless .
and that 's the essence of the gutlessness endemic to films like the bachelor --
the fear of giving the characters flaws to overcome on their way to happiness .
there 's never any tension between the two star - crossed lovers , because there 's no sense that anything remotely significant is at stake .
the blandly nice o'donnell could n't pull off a randy cad if he tried , so the filmmakers do n't even let him ; zellweger 's anne may have issues with her sickeningly affectionate parents as an impossible standard to live up to , but no one dares make her anything but the woman ( lightly ) wronged . and forget about seeing enough of jimmy and anne together to feel invested in their potential reconciliation .
the parade of sit - com set pieces had better be damned funny , since they 're all that stands between us and a blissfully sweet foregone conclusion .
i 'll admit a couple of those set pieces are amusing , including ustinov 's rantings about procreation and a restaurant full - to - bursting with men popping questions and champagne corks .
far more of them are either tedious or downright ghastly
, like the shudder - inducing sight of brooke shields as an icy fortune - hunter or the hideous collection of stereotypes when hundreds of potential brides gather in a church .
you 're never going to get too many raucous belly laughs from a film like the bachelor , but that 's not the real problem .
nor is it the real problem that you know exactly the kind of warm - n - fuzzy conclusion it 's leading up to .
the problem are a beginning and middle that are equally warm - n - fuzzy --
there 's no spark , no energy , no humanity .
it 's an emotional pudding guaranteed not to offend any consumer 's digestions .
we 've reached a point where our proxies for cinematic romantic wish fulfillment do n't even have a pulse .
the bachelor is love among the mannequins .
either tedious or downright ghastly there 's no spark , no energy , no humanity this marshmallow of a movie it 's almost embarrassing like the shudder - inducing sight blandly nice