The potentially playful tone of The Bachelor is set by the rousing opening theme "Don't Fence Me In", as well as a shot of a wild herd of mustangs running across the open plains. Unfortunately, half way through the film, I found myself feeling more than a little fenced in and, by the third act, I was begging to be set free. What starts out as an earnestly romantic screwball comedy soon descends into bubble gum antics powered by a one-note gimmick that wears out really fast.

The whole "being fenced in" notion comes into play when we meet our hero Jimmie Shannon (Chris O'Donnell), a fresh-scrubbed young man who is enamored of "Mustanghood": "You have no one to answer to. You run across the primal plane, searching for sweet grasses." In other words, Jimmie wants to sow his oats, so much so that he botches his proposal to his true love Anne (Renee Zellweger) by simply telling her that, after a year together, she "wins."

The fact is that Jimmie is terrified of the "F" word -- Future -- but his granddad's death makes him face facts sooner rather than later. Jimmie runs his grandfather's pool table company and, per grandpa's will, Jimmie will lose his $10 million inheritance and the entire company if he doesn't get married by his 30th birthday. Guess what -- he turns 30 tomorrow and Anne has told Jimmie to get lost. In fact, his "you win" proposal is so infamous that everybody in town knows about it.

Now, Jimmie is a really nice kid -- too nice for my liking (in fact "saccharine" comes to mind) and he just can't stand the thought of having to dissolve his grandpa's company, putting all his honest employees out of work. So, with some urging from his best pal Marko (Artie Lange), Jimmie decides to propose to one of his old girlfriends. Now, here is where the story starts to fall apart, predicated as it is on Jimmie sacrificing himself for everyone else. What kind of romantic comedy is that! After botching the first proposal, he runs through nine other gals, screwing things up with them too and convincing us that he's a pathetic loser. Finally, of course, he wins over his true love Anne, but then that was the whole point anyway.

It's clear that screenwriter Steve Cohen was more than inspired by the 1925 silent film "Seven Chances" starring Buster Keaton. He tries to infuse his story with a modern perspective, eagerly confronting the all-too-common male fear of marriage, that amorphous move from "Bachelorville" to "Husbandtown." The trouble is that he treats his subject with too much zanines. Maybe I've gotten jaded, but it seems that the screwball romantic comedy doesn't quite fly in the modern world. It's too over-the-top, too sugar-coated, too implausible.

Following this mold, The Bachelor goes from bad to worse, starting with Cohen's one-liner script and aided by Gary Sinyor's contrived direction. Everything here is powered by the all-powerful "gimmick" whether it's the terms of Jimmie's inheritance or his decision to "do the right thing" because of his employees or the final, ridiculous scenario of 1,000 brides chasing Jimmie to the church. Sure, it's a big Hollywood ending, but it doesn't feel real, just like the rest of the film. It smacks of manipulation, not true sentiment. In the process, the characters' real emotions get lost, a fact intensified by Zellwegger's one-note performance (she looks like she is in pain for the entire film) and O'Donnell's down-home cheeriness/desperation that feels hollow from the word go. Sorry to say, but O'Donnell just can't come close to Buster Keaton.

It pains me to lambaste material like this because I'm a sucker for romantic comedies. The real problem is that The Bachelor isn't really a romantic comedy. Instead of being about finding love, it's about fearing it. In the end, when Jimmie sees the light and Anne forgives him, we hardly believe it. My guess is that, a year from now, these kids will be getting a divorce.