BACHELOR PARTY

US, 1984, 101 minutes, Colour.
Tom Hanks, Tawny Kittaen, George Grizzard, Adrian Zmed.
Directed by Neal Israel.

Bachelor Party is not to be confused with the 1957 film written by Paddy Chayevsky and directed by Delbert Mann. However, this film focuses on the American tradition of the bucks' party prior to a wedding.

The film is of interest insofar as it reflects popular entertainment of 1984. It was one of the most substantial box office successes in the United States as well as overseas. It was written and directed by Neal Israel, writer of another success of 1984, Police Academy.

The film shows the hero, his lewd and lecherous friends and the preparation for his wedding, especially the complications of hookers and the bride's family (eventually disguised as hookers) at the bachelor party. The film is raucous in its humour, it is not clever or witty (as was, often enough, Israel's Police Academy). The film relies on broad leering humour, sex jokes, innuendo as well as blatant and exploitive jokes.

George Grizzard, surprisingly, appears as the hero's prospective father-in-law. The strength of the film is in Tom Hanks, an excellent comedian with a good sense of timing, who wanders amiably (sometimes doing parodies of film heroes) through the film and who does, at least, present some attempt at values. Hanks showed to greater advantage with Daryl Hannah in the mermaid story, Splash.

There were umpteen films like Bachelor Party throughout the early '80s, almost indicating that the sole audience with interest in cinema was the teenage and early adult audiences.