Editor's note: It has been brought to the attention of The Flat Hat that Ben Domenech, a writer for The Flat Hat from 1999 to 2000, may have copied from and failed to cite sources in several articles. The Flat Hat is currently investigating these allegations.

If you have any information about other articles that contain copied material, please e-mail the editor at flthat@wm.edu.

Correction: A previous version of this note stated that Domenech was a writer for The Flat Hat from 1999 to 2001. In fact, it appears his last contribution was a letter to the editor on Dec. 8, 2000.

By Ben Domenech

Flat Hat Staff Writer

COURTESY PHOTO, New Line Cinema

Renee Zelwegger and Chris O'Donnell ponder marriage in order to inherit a fortune.

Jerry Seinfeld once said that men in a wedding party all wear tuxedos for two reasons. First, women think guys are all the same anyway, so they may as well dress the same. Also, if the groom doesn't show, the bride can marry any other guy.

"The Bachelor" is, roughly, the flip side of that joke. According to director Gary Sinyor's latest effort, marriage ought to have a big red sign on it blinking "The Fun Stops Here." So, if a guy has to get married, well, any gal in a white gown is as good as the next.

Jimmie Shannon (Chris O'Donnell) has to get married ‹ not that he wants to. He's happy to run his family's factory, date laid-back photographer Anne (Renee Zellweger) and drink with pal Marco (Artie Lange). But when Anne nabs the bouquet at a wedding, Jimmie takes it like the kiss of death.

He buys a ring, takes her to a swank eatery and pops the question. It's the worst proposal ever, worthy of urban legend, culminating in the words, "You win." Welcome to Dumpville, Jimmie.

Naturally, Jimmie's eccentric uncle (Peter Ustinov) picks exactly this moment to drop dead and leave him $100 million, with a condition: he has to be married by his 30th birthday, which happens to be tomorrow. If he doesn't get hitched by that time, he'll lose the money and the factory. So Jimmie and Marco get a priest (a delightfully stiff James Cromwell), a limo, tuxes, roses and go to find Anne; despite the circumstances, Jimmie botches it again. This leaves them one option: visit all his exes until somebody ‹ anybody ‹ says "I do." What fun! Overnight, word gets out in the local press that Jimmie needs a quick bride, which creates a frenzy among hundreds of Bay Area females. A rabid mob of women hunting down a rare multimillionaire beast is a stretch of a situation, even for a movie set in San Francisco. The caricatures among the mob, sassy black chick, halter top-wearing biker babe, don't say much about the writer's imagination when it comes to women.

Nevertheless, when Jimmie's marathon quest sets off a bridal wave of interest, the film transforms a sea of white-wearing women into a threatening mass of tulle and tiaras. "The Bachelor" is based on a 1927 silent flick by Buster Keaton, which, although I've never seen it, probably has better dialogue. The second-rate script squanders the film's talent, never overcomes the tale¹s preposterousness and, lacking the charisma to be a tender love story, ends up relying solely on sappy comedy.

The film has its moments: when Jimmie compares the traditional bouquet toss to Shirley Jackson's grim story about ritualistic human sacrifice, "The Lottery," you've got to admit he has a point.

At its best, "The Bachelor" skews the absurdity of any human relationships ‹ even the successful ones. As terrified as Jimmie is of losing his freedom, Anne is equally worried about becoming like her parents ‹ who, it turns out, are an older couple nauseatingly and demonstratively still in love with each other.

Don't blame the cast ‹ clean-cut O'Donnell and quirky Zellweger make a cute couple, and you can't complain about the performances of such curmudgeonly co-stars such as Ustinov, Ed Asner and Hal Holbrook. Mariah Carey lampoons her own image in a brief cameo, and Brooke Shields' appearance as a mercenary, Joan Crawford-esque WASP is one of the film's best scenes.

Of course, when Shields is the best part of your movie, you have problems. "The Bachelor" never generates enough laughs or sighs to enchant the audience ‹ the only thing more disappointing than a truly awful film is a merely weak one that has some really fun moments. It may be just as easy to love rich as it is to love poor, but it¹s hard to love anything that's just plain average.