Take my advice, skip The Bachelor and go straight to the source material – Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances from 1925 (or either of the two Three Stooges remakes for that matter). If you still insist on seeking it out, consider yourself warned.
The Bachelor is a terrible movie in almost every way possible. It’s a comedy without laughs, a date movie that would ruin any date, and its central romance is clueless and banal. It also manages plenty of sexism and male-chauvinism perpetrated by a lead that we’re supposed to identify with as an everyman whose behavior and thinking is that of a typical male. This is a dumb, pointless movie that does nothing but reinforces the idea that women are crazy and that the ineptitudes of idiotic men should be tolerated.
Aside from not being funny or entertaining in any way, The Bachelor operates on the premise that women can be sorted into distinct types. Each of these types has several flaws, most of which are intolerable or undesirable to men. When Jimmie Shannon (Chris O’Donnell) discovers that to receive his grandfather’s inheritance (Peter Ustinov, in an utterly baffling performance), he must get married within 24 hours, he sets off on a quest to get hitched. With his long-time girlfriend, Anne (Renée Zellweger), out of the question due to a business trip and a previously botched proposal, Jimmie must now consult a secret stash-box full of pictures of old girlfriends to find a new life-partner.
Each of these old flames possesses quirks ranging from feminism (ignorantly written by a male) to clinginess (again, male writer) that Jimmie finds unappealing or disqualifying. It’s hard to watch, as the women paraded around the film are nothing more than antagonistic plot devices or foils to the male protagonist we’re supposed to be rooting for. Frankly, I was hoping each one of these women would kick him right in the balls.
Take the film’s “meet cute” as an example of the oblivious writing we’re dealing with: Jimmie and Anne first meet when she witnesses him selfishly breaking up with his girlfriend in a restaurant. What the hell kind of out of touch, backward storytelling is that? Do writer Steve Cohen and director Gary Sinyor think that’s how dating works? They must. It’s the set-up to the film’s main relationship. Not to mention, Zellweger doesn’t even utter a complete sentence until 20 minutes into the movie. She’s the love of this spoiled shit’s life, but she never talks. She’s nothing more than a projection of male ownership and a stand-in for every crazy woman who would dare want a man to treat her with dignity.
Except for O’Donnell, the entire cast – including Hal Holbrook, Ed Asner, Brook Shields, Sarah Silverman, and James Cromwell – are acting well below their talents (I’m even including the obnoxious Artie Lange in that list). O’Donnell’s usual smirking, half-witted incompetence, on the other hand, fits right into the mess. His impishness is supposed to be endearing in an “aw shucks” kind of way, but mostly he comes off as a childish asshole – which is no surprise given his body of work. When you add it all up – the writing, directing, and lead performance – The Bachelor earns exactly one thing: its 9% Rotten Tomatoes rating. And even that is pushing it.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.