Hey folks, Harry here with... well... a legend in the ranks of evil doers. A fiendish foul foe from far east. He seems as if he wishes to prove his mettle vs the dear old man, Moriarty. Well, only time will tell if the dear Dr can pass the mustard. Of course it'll be very very hot and won't go with bologna. Shucks. Well here he is with a review of Chris O'Donnell's latest... film, a remake of a classic Buster Keaton comedy of old.
There is a wrong being shamelessly spread by your deceitful website. This is that Moriarty is THE evil genius of the world. Ha! What knows that foul Englishman of evil. His plans were all nimbly halted dead in their tracks by the attempts of that dullard, Holmes. Now Nayland Smith was a worthy adversary till my daughter strung him out on my special blossoms. Moriarty has no progeny, he's an impotent dried up seed of a man. I, Dr Fu Manchu, am the only true evil genius in this land of ours. To prove it I will deftly take to task young boy wonder in his latest blunder.
That is right, I saw a screening the other night of a film not opening till Nov. 5th, it's "The Bachelor". New Line Cinema is releasing this film which is a remake of Buster Keaton's "Seven Chances" (1925). The plot:
Jimmie Shannon (chris o'donnell) is a young spry man who meets a beautiful girl, Anne (renee zellweger) at a coffee shop. He, in numerous scenes wines, dines, romances and takes her on a rollercoaster ride through alot of annoying narration. He then decides to pop the magical question to her 'would you marry me'? Anne who complains to her friend Llana (mariah carey) about the bad side of Jimmie, says no. She feels that he's not ready to commit to marriage, she doesn't see it in his eyes.
After Jimmie constantly goes after her to prove his love he finally quits. He then seeks advice from his grandfather (peter ustinov), who uses a bullhorn to shout commands to his family. He tells him to go for what your heart tells you. Jimmie decides he'll go after her. The next day his grandfather dies and leaves a videotaped will for all to hear. When the relatives gather he tells everyone that he will leave $100 Million dollars to Jimmie providing that he get married before 6:05pm the following day (it marks the day Jimmie was born). If he does not he'll lose the money and his Billiard company will go down the toilet.
Jimmie goes after Anne, but decides not to take his best friend's advice (artie lange) Marco, and tell her the truth about why he really wants to marry her (i.e. $100 million). Anne doesn't see it in his eyes and tells him no again, then she takes off in a helicopter on a business trip.
Jimmie has less than 24 hours to find a woman to marry so his buddy Marco puts an ad in the newspaper and now every women in the whole city of San Francisco wants him.
The problem with this film is that it's not funny. O'Donnell, who also produced this film (a bad sign), prances around spewing his dialogue as if it was suppose to be knockdown laughs. The characters are uninteresting, James Cromwell plays a priest who runs around trying to find Jimmie to he can marry them, that's cute. Ed Asner plays Sid who co-owns the company and Brooke Shields is Jimmie's old girlfriend, both are very draggy characters who bore you rather than give interesting performances.
Both O'Donnell and Zellweger had no chemistry together. She hated him so much it's hard to believe the ending to the film. There's no way these two would last one night after marriage. You've also seen this story done to death, considering it's so close to "Brewster's Millions" & "Easy Money'.
I also don't trust remakes of old classics. The script is lame and poorly written by a 2nd Unit Grip on 'Arlington Road', Steve Cohen. The original film was directed by and starring Buster Keaton in 1925 "Seven Chances" (available on video). Now I ran out and rented that and it was funny.
It was directed by Gary Sinyor, who brought us the small unseen "Stiff Upper Lips". The narration by O'Donnell's character is pretty annoying as well as the slow paced running time of 110 minutes. The trouble is that New Line needs another hit badly due to several failures (Detroit Rock City, Astronaut's Wife and Drop Dead Gorgeous). This may very well be their next. The tagline reads:
"Would You Marry This Man For $100 Million Dollars"?
It should read:
"Would You Pay $8.50 To Sit Through This Film"?
Now it's time to re-enter my torture chamber. There's a young morsel with blonde hair that my lovely daughter, Fah Lo See, is running razor sharp metal tendrils over. Soon she will tell us the secret hiding place of the 3 draft version of The Lord Of The Rings script. Soon my friend.
Dr. Fu Manchu
