The Bachelor is a horrifying tale about what the world would be like if Chris O'Donnell were at the center of the universe. As you can imagine, it's pretty sobering stuff. A seemingly intelligent woman like Renee Zellweger is reduced to blithering idiocy, the talents of gifted actors like James Cromwell, Hal Holbrook and Peter Ustinov are completely wasted, and every fret and worry that crosses O'Donnell's prettified brow is agonized over as though the fate of the world were in jeopardy.

That's largely because the world as known in The Bachelor IS in jeopardy, since that world revolves blandly around its center, Chris O'Donnell (portraying factory foreman Jimmy Shannon--really, the two seem virtually interchangeable), and that center is in jeopardy because it has twenty-four hours to marry someone and win a $100 million inheritence from its grandfather (Ustinov). Otherwise, O'Donnell will get nothing, the billiards manufacturing company that his grandfather owns will be sold off, and over 200 people that we don't care much about except as O'Donnell's grateful servants will become jobless. Tragic.

Because O'Donnell is a selfish and shallow asshole, he doesn't have enough good sense to just marry Zellweger (in the role of Ann--also interchangeable with the actress, since the role is little more than a set of O'Donnell-centric emotional outbursts strung together) and be done with it. Ann is the girl Jimmy really loves, but unfortunately, O'Donnell gets wrapped up in a belabored metaphor about bachelors being stallions who are free to run around munching all the grass they want, and I'm sure you can guess what the "grass" represents. He's trapped in this metaphor and unable to accept his love for Zellweger. I'm afraid I can't blame him; if Zellweger is really as boring and one-dimensional as her character in this film, I'd be afraid to tie the knot as well.

So instead of marrying Ann (he thinks she's gone to Greece for good, but she changed her mind and went home for the weekend instead--funny how those things happen), Jimmy runs around for the better part of those 24 hours approaching an endless parade of gorgeous women and asking them to marry him for fifty million dollars. This accomplishes nothing for the audience; women think these chicks onscreen are insane because their panties are all wadded up for O'Donnell and they'd marry him in a second, and men think O'Donnell is a son of a bitch because they're jealous that he's shagged Mariah Carey and Brooke Shields in the same lifetime.

Both emotional responses--the envious bitterness of female viewers and the jealous hatred of male viewers--come to a head in the film's climactic sequence, as literally thousands of women take up residence in a church to win a chance at scoring O'Donnell's hand in marriage. That's where those images from the commercials come from, of all those brides chasing O'Donnell around the streets of San Francisco. The plot twist makes for some amazing visuals, but strains the incredulidity of the plot way past the breaking point. C'mon, Chris; you're a very cute young actor who has at least twenty more years of hotness ahead of you. Why does your movie need to work so hard at reminding the audience just how yummy a catch you must be? Leave that shit to Harrison Ford; he's the old fogey, not you.

Aside from its absurd and unabashedly O'Donnell-centric plot, The Bachelor suffers from that most damaging of comedic ailments: it ain't funny. There's no other way to put it. Most of the jokes hit the theater floor with echoing thuds, and the ones that do work just sorta hang there, suspended in the abyss of the film's unfunniness, until another unfunny one-liner spits out and knocks it off the screen. The jokes aren't even presented in a way that demonstrates any sense of comedic timing, so you can't trick yourself into believing that they're funny just because they zing past your head in the theater. Each scene drags like RuPaul, bad joke piles on top of bad joke, and before long you're wishing you could marry O'Donnell's sorry ass just to end the film and put the audience out of its misery.

You might be wondering what makes this manipulative, star-fucked romantic comedy any different from the other manipulative, sstar-fucked romantic comedies churned out of the Hollywood money machine on a regular basis. The only distinguishing characteristic I can come up with that makes The Bachelor more awful than any of its ilk is that its shamelessness is constantly exposed. Whether it's the stale and unfunny dialogue, the dragging comic timing, the vapidity of Zellweger or the sheer mindnumbing boredom inspired by O'Donnell's performance, there's always something there to remind you that yes, this is just another worthless romantic comedy and yes, you have forty-five more minutes to sit through before you can go home and try to get into your best girl's pants. It's everything that's awful about "chick flicks" and bad movies all wrapped together, dripping constantly from O'Donnell's shit-eating grin.

More than anything, The Bachelor proves that a universe built around Chris O'Donnell is a terrifying place to be.