one of the contributors to the destruction of the batman film franchise chris o'donnell stars in this remake of buster keaton 's 1925 silent film seven chances .
now i 've never seen seven chances , as i 'm more of a chaplin fan than a keaton fan , but i seriously doubt that the classic version could be as insipid as this .
o'donnell plays jimmie shannon , the manager of a pool table manufacturing company .
he also fears commitment , and despite dating anne ( renee zellweger ) for over three years , he 's unwilling to marry her .
his reasons ?
well he 's a guy you see , and well , guys are like stallions , and they apparently do n't like to be roped or something ( hey , that 's the movie 's explanation . . .
i 'd marry renee zellweger in a second ) .
eventually it comes time for jimmie to propose , and when he does , it 's the most absurd proposal ever uttered by a man ever .
he essentially says to her , " you win " and hands her a ring .
the audience should now hate this character .
i did .
then the meat of the plot presents itself .
jimmie 's grandfather ( peter ustinov , completely wasted ) dies and leaves jimmie his entire estate of 100 million dollars as well as ownership of the pool table business .
however , in order to get the money and save the jobs of the factory workers , jimmie must be married before his next birthday ( which is just over 24 hours away ) .
having blown his chances with anne , jimmie proceeds to track down all his prior girlfriends and suggest a " business proposition " .
the movie was n't half bad by this time , surprisingly .
it was n't boring me , and even managed to read my thoughts at one point .
ustinov 's character left a video will , and while he 's reading the ridiculous clause in it , i thought to myself " what is this , brewster 's millions ?
" . as soon as i thought it , hal holbrook 's character actually says " what is this , brewster 's millions ?
"
it was quite surreal .
something happens though during the film 's final act that caused me to sharply drop the rating
it was going to receive .
up to that point , all of jimmie 's prior girlfriends had turned down his " business proposition " which i felt was good .
at least the film was n't painting women to be cold hearted gold diggers .
when jimmie has no other options , his goofy friend ( played by artie lange , making a career out of playing the goofy friend ) places an ad in the newspaper that somehow becomes a front page story .
at this point , 100 , 000 women don wedding gowns and head off to persuade jimmie to pick them to be his bride .
these women arrive at jimmie 's location and immediately start bullying him about what he 's looking for in a woman .
when he 's had enough of their unjustified attacks , he tells the angry mob that there 's been a mistake and he wo n't be marrying any of them .
as a result , the women proceed to chase him around the city , in hopes of catching him and tearing his limbs off .
this goes on for the rest of the film .
it 's just chris o'donnell running from 100 , 000 obnoxious , greedy , angry and stupid women .
my groans of disgust could be heard for miles .
the film finally ended ( thankfully ) , but to this day
i 'm still groaning .
the bachelor is available on dvd from new line home video .
it contains the film in both full frame and in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1 . 85 : 1 , cast and crew info , and special dvd - rom features .
the original theatrical trailer is also on the disc , which contains scenes not in the film .
apparently there was even more footage of the gang of brides chasing o'donnell around the city , and at one point o'donnell is leaping from the tops of buses .
so that was bad enough to be cut , but the other 30 minutes of bride shenanigans was good ? ugh .
as insipid as this caused me to sharply drop the rating ugh . i 'm still groaning one of the contributors to the destruction my groans of disgust could be heard for miles