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brian [ 6.5 ]
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Hmm what can I say... it was a cute, date movie, with a full cast of "Names" Mariah needs acting lessons and shouldn't quit her day job of singing.
Overall it wasn't that bad of a movie, although it didn't have much substance.
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DokBrowne [ 1.0 ]
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Chris O'Donnell is so ordinary he's painful to watch. Renee Zellweger is terribly ugly (sorry that sounds superficial, but hey, as the love interest, she must be judged) as she's been in every single movie since "Jerry Maguire". To top off, she's shrill and hypocritical. In case you don't know let me fill you in on movie: Chris and Renee date for a long time, but Chris and apparently all of male-kind are commitment-phobic (marriage is seen as a dreaded termination of freedom and individuality by every guy in the movie; it's depressing). So when she catches the flowers at someone's wedding, he figures he's been doomed to propose so he does reluctantly but botches it up and she leaves him. And then he sees his grandpa's will which says he'll give Chris his entire $100 million fortune if he gets married by his 30th birthday which unfortunately for Chris is the next day. So with Renee out of town (she fled with her sympathetic sister to her parents' house in embarrassment after Chris botches a second proposal), he seeks out his old girlfriends and asks them all for marriage with the promise of all that money to make their decision easier. Ugghhh. I wouldn't blame you if that simply summary repels you completely. Like in "Loser" and lots of romantic comedies recently, it's so obviously foretold that Chris & Renee will get together that the journey is a gigantic, laborious waste of time. And it's no easy feat sitting through the whole thing. Example: everyone sees Chris as the idiot in the relationship even though Renee never does ANYTHING in the relationship. It's Chris who initiates all, who has to apologize again and again, he who is solely responsible for maintaining everything and in a way that satisfies them both. Why doesn't she make an effort? 100 years of women's lib and we still must prove ourselves and be held accountable for all the mistakes. And then it seems like everyone's life revolves around him. The whole time he is accompanied by "Mad TV"'s Artie Lange (his best friend), James Cromwell (the priest for the wedding-to-be, and don't even ask why he sinks to this crap), Ed Asner (his family lawyer), and Hal Holbrook (his kooky uncle), all of whom have families and lives but spend 2 days following Chris around in his misguided bride-quest. But get this: Chris, of course, is appalled by the idea of marrying a stranger just for money despite how everyone is anxious to help him (I guess $100 million means nothing to the truly DECENT guys out there...), so to give him motivation, the screenwriter's added to grandpa's will that he'd close down all his estates and owned property, which includes a local billiards hall where all his long-time friends work, so if Chris isn't married, they'll all be out of a job, so now he has to save THEM, like he's not only stuck with having to be the most precisely perfect boyfriend for Renee but also for upholding the interests of an entire town's population basically at his own expense. So we get cameos from lots of actresses from his past (Mariah Carey, annoying; Jennifer Esposito, hotter than usual; Brooke Shields, really hot but sorely unpleasant) and incessant chattery love talk by everyone, especially Renee, who the movie cuts back to frequently as she spends time with her sister, Marley Shelton (she was Tobey's girlfriend in "Pleasantville" and one of that trio of popular bitches in "Never Been Kissed"), who's a billion times more sexy and good looking than Renee and would undoubtedly make a better leading lady, but oh well. Chris, though looking out for his friends' jobs and lives (which is never again mentioned after it's introduction to the plot) and seemingly a pleasant guy, is monstrously callous with women, at one point even telling a potential wife that she was 3rd on his list of women to ask, eluding the easy and harmless opportunity he had to lie and say she's 1st. I mean, how determiend can he be when he slips up so badly like that? It's his honesty in a situation like that is meant to endear us to him, but it backfires big time. James Cromwell doesn't even really speak until 2/3 of the way through, and then he ends up with the only saving grace role, as a kind hearted family man, but there's still the question of why he joined the cast. I used to think he was A-list after "Babe" and "L.A. Confidential" but since then he's only had supporting roles as various creeps and shady types or in this garbage. Guess I was wrong. Meanwhile...late in the film, Artie is getting impatient with Chris (who's struggling with what he really wants and what's right and all that), so he launches into a loud, sarcastic tirade against him at a diner, leaving me maddeningly to wonder why the hell he even cares. Artie's not going to score any of that money. It's Chris's situation, his problem, so why doesn't Artie cut the guy some fuckin' slack? Meanwhile again...the money shot at the end is when thousands of brides appear to marry Chris after Artie puts a want ad in the paper. It's an original sight, but boy is it ugly. Not physically, but how the brides behave. Every single one of them is a total bitch, demanding and pushy and insensitive and embodying any number of loathsome traits. As with the men in the beginning (fearing marriage and trying desperately to avoid it), the women are portrayed as the very worst they could possibly be. They are, I kid you not, the least appealing, saddest representation of femininity I've ever witnessed in a movie. As proof, they CHASE HIM all around San Francisco...like what, they're gonna attack him? Somewhere at this time Chris has an epiphany about Renee, remembering her frumpy smiling face in about 4 trite scenes we watched earlier in the movie, and that's what triggers his moral redemption, his decision to pursue Renee only. It's the evil montage!, straight from "Loser", "Down to You", "Boys & Girls", just too many goddamn movies of late (not to mention the dozens of times it's been used in romances for the past few decades). So then the climax: Chris climbs a ladder to some apartment balcony with the army of brides below him like a white swarm of ants converging on a helpless grasshopper (and yes, they all put on their expensive wedding gowns, all 50,000 of them), all trying to reach him, and then Renee arrives and inexplicably is the ONLY person to think to ascend the same ladder that Chris did, and by golly it works! Her sister Marley is also there, and somehow, admist the mammoth crowd of yelling, her single cry of "shut up!" silences everyone there. At that point Chris says all the right things finally, and from within a police car below that is being violently tipped and assaulted by the brides (I swear, it's horrifying), using the bullhorn, James Cromwell delivers the service to them. And afterward, just as mortifying, Renee gives a speech to the lot of brides, one that isn't anything universal about finding true love and not just chasing down some rich guy for his money (which would have been just as irritating, but at least more meaningful), but instead about why SHE and not THEM deserves Chris as a husband (until that point, there's no indication that she feels much for him at all; I suppose it's also Chris' responsibility to feel love for both of them). The crowd then "aaawwwws", their savage, revolting hearts won over by this sincere (-ly uninteresting) profession of love. And that's it. There were some additional minor gripes in between (during an early wedding attempt, Cromwell inadvertently begins a funeral speech, yuk yuk...as if no one bothered filling him in on the occasion; and also a cinematic philosophy I inferred that the use of Artie Lange in any movie instantly discounts about 1/2 it's credibility points, i.e. "Dirty Work" and "Lost & Found"). Jeez, that's like 1000 words more than this movie deserved. Sorry
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Love_Spoon [ 6.0 ]
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It was my wife's turn to pick the movie that we went to see, so we saw The Bachelor. I'll admit that it has some funny moments, and some witty lines, but again, Chris O'Donnell does everything in his power to bug me to tears. In the film, O'Donnell must marry (and stay married) by his 33rd birthday in order to inherit $120 million from his crochety old (dead) Grandfather's trust. He looks at the calendar, and what do you know? The big day is tomorrow. Same story as the Buster Keaton film Seven Chances. Interesting imagery of the streets of San Francisco being completely filled up with multitudes of women in wedding dresses chasing our little hero. Not horrible, but not really all that good.
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Edwards [ 0.0 ]
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The movie to see if you must learn how to hate either gender, because are both are represented as foully and unfairly as possible. It's like the movie was a convention of sexists from both camps that pooled their ideas into one giant hate-fest
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| Weighted Rating | : 5.4 |
| No. Ratings | : 8 | |
| No. Reviews | : 6 | |
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