Bachelor Party
Bachelor Party
R | 29 June 1984 (USA)
Bachelor Party Trailers

On the eve of his wedding to his longtime girlfriend, unassuming nice guy Rick is dragged out for a night of debauchery by his friends.

Reviews
Movie_Muse_Reviews

Pardon the grumpiness, but "Bachelor Party" might be the most misogynistic comedy ever realized on screen. At least that I've seen. There's room to be forgiving of the attitude toward women that most 20th century films have, but "Bachelor Party" seems to bend over backward to make women the butt of the joke — or more accurately to this film, the t**s."Bachelor Party" sees bus driver Rick (Tom Hanks) and retail worker Debbie (Tawny Kitaen) deciding to get married, launching Rick's sad sack of a friend group — Jay (Adrian Zmed), Gary (Gary Grossman), Rudy (Barry Diamond), and Ryko (Michael Dudikoff) — into discussion of the hookers they're going to hire. Meanwhile, Rick's disapproving future father-in-law (George Grizzard) convinces his preferred choice for Debbie, Cole (Robert Prescott) to sabotage the party and the engagement. The film is the series of gags that ensue, which also includes what happens at Debbie's shower.So many films of this era are patterned this way, with sex-themed debauchery the primary objective. What sets "Bachelor Party" apart — in all the wrong ways — is its one- dimensional (that dimension being sex-crazed) characters whom it holds up as being cool and clever despite programming them to do nothing but objectify women. Of course Rick is written to be the exception — and serve as the film's argument for why it isn't sexist.Bob Israel, with writers Neal Israel and Pat Proft —who just a few months before this film released their first "Police Academy" movie — write a funny screwball comedy in many respects, but so many jokes are contrived and tailored to sexual situations, i.e. laughs that come at the expense of women (and in one case, a trans character). That it even flirts with a character having sex with a donkey is sad. Other things can be funny.The film's ambition to be the next "Animal House" is so transparent that it borders on pathetic. There's its use of Mozart to create irony similar to the opening of "Animal House," but the coup de grace is when Rudy, the character with rocks for brains (aka this movie's Bluto/John Belushi), is seen chugging a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Only "Animal House" can be "Animal House." That film at least made up for its treatment of women with a unique quirkiness, charming characters and a greater purpose in evoking the nostalgia of the vintage collegiate experience.Israel and Proft do a killer job in one respect — Rick's dialogue. In spite of everything around him, Hanks might give his funniest performance of all time in this movie. His lines are razor sharp and display incredible wit and Hanks oozes with charm. His work and character salvage the movie and then some.It feels harsh to go after a film from 1984 for being misogynistic; "Bachelor Party" was far from the lone perpetrator. Yet the design of this movie calls particular attention to its penchant for exploitation and sours the experience of revisiting this comedy in a way it doesn't for other similar films. ~Steven CThanks for reading! Visit Movie Muse Reviews for more

... View More
jimy23

Growing up I had no real rules on what to and not to watch so I Grew up watching not just ET Batman Power Ranger Carebears Darkwing duck But also Bikini car wash company Dinosaur Island Friday the 13th Hardbodies Hellraiser and Bachelor party. I must have been 5 or 6 when i first saw this and I loved the Racy and zany humor I didn't know it wasn't for kids but I didn't care. Tom hanks Roots are built on movies like this and big the Donkey scene was too funny so was the guy being wrapped up in sheets being lowered from the hotel. I am not for censorship so i would not mind any one seeing it My sister and cousins like me could see it and others like it at a young age. Like one crazy summer moving violations It's Under-rated and doesn't get the acknowledgment it deserves. This is an 80's classic and a big part of tom hanks early career. I give it 7/10.

... View More
edwagreen

A very young Tom Hanks stars in this 1984 film with many familiar themes.As a school bus driver getting married to a girl from an uppity family, Hanks' assortment of odd friends plus his married doctor brother plan the usual bachelor party for him.His father-in-law to be dislikes Hanks so that he gets his daughter's former boyfriend on the case to get rid of our lad.The film is typical of what goes on at our wild, swinging bachelor parties. There is plenty of merriment and glee, especially when the girlfriend and her friends crash the party as hookers.While the very end of the film is hilarious when things get out of hand at the posh hotel where the swinging party is being held, the film is so typical and predictable.

... View More
MetalGeek

I was 14 years old when "Bachelor Party" was released...therefore I was too young to see it in a theatre as it was rated "R," and of course Mom and Dad weren't going to take me to see such a film. About a year after that it happened to come on HBO one night while my parents were out for the evening, so I excitedly sat down to watch this forbidden fruit. I laughed my ass off for the entire movie, of course, and the experience was heightened by the knowledge that if Mom and Dad came home before the movie was over and caught me watching it, they would've kicked my butt. Fortunately the film ended before they returned, so I got away with my little indiscretion. That's my main "Bachelor Party" memory and why the film remains so special to me all these years later.Seeing it again after a quarter of a century (! has it been that long?) I was confronted with a blast of nostalgia. "Bachelor Party" is now a true time capsule of the '80s and as soon as it started I was transported back to my junior high days. Hard to believe that Tom Hanks -- yes, THE Tom Hanks -- got his start in goofball comedies like this, "Volunteers" and the sit-com "Bosom Buddies" before becoming an award winning serious actor. Hanks is likable in just about anything, and "Bachelor Party" is no exception. His character, a goofy slacker named Rick who drives a school bus for a living, has somehow lucked into marrying the gorgeous Tawny Kitaen (who would become famous a few years later for her turn in several Whitesnake videos, then infamous after that for her drug and alcohol fueled activities), to the horror of her rich parents. Rick's party-animal friends (including Adrian Zmed of "Grease 2" and "T.J. Hooker" fame) want to send Rick off into married life with the bachelor bash to end all bashes, and so the characters descend on an upscale hotel suite with all the class of a horde of Vikings on the attack. The party has all the sleazy trimmings you'd expect (drugs, hookers, booze, porn, strippers, etc.) plus a few hilarious asides such as a pimp who "looks like Gandhi" and a well endowed male stripper who goes by the stage name "Nick the Dick." Rick's fiancé, afraid that he will be unfaithful to him during said party, decides to crash the proceedings with her friends, leading to predictable '80s raunch-comedy chaos. (A naked guy hung out of the hotel window! A Marilyn Monroe lookalike stripper who turns out to be a guy in drag! A cocaine-snorting donkey that dies of an OD!) I laughed just as hard as I did when I was a teenybopper! This movie still holds up as one of the best low brow comedies of the 80s, if not of all time. Rent this one and give your inner 14 year old the time of his life!

... View More