THE BACHELOR (1999) *1/2 This film has some major problems going against it, for me, going in. First, the leads: I don't like Chris O'Donnell and Renée Zellweger makes me nauseous. Next set of problems are that it's silly and stupid, but you know, the big thing it has going for it is that it doesn't ever even begin to pretend that it's not. Oh I'm sure they were shooting for entertaining, or something else that they couldn't attain, but you have to admire its blatant lack of ambition, the total lack of faux enthusiasm for itself. So, silly, ok, that's something. They make up for some of its inadequacies by putting some interesting, and/or almost interesting, actors around the corners: Marley Shelton, Hal Holbrook, Peter Ustinov, Ed Asner, Brooke Shields…in roughly that order, in this one. And the closing scenes are visually….um, you know, pretty silly. Silly almost…almost to the point of being entertaining. Marley has a brilliant line about Leonardo DiCaprio. So brilliant that it redeems the entire film. If you can find someone to tell you what it is, there's no reason to watch the movie at all.
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