The Bachelor Weekend

source: The Bachelor Weekend

Fionnan is such a sensitive guy that not only does he refuse to have a traditional stag gathering before his wedding, he declares that he will be a part of the hen cluster if his fiancé so chooses. This sickens even his openly gay friend. Lovingly urged on by Fionnan's fiancé, his friends drag Fionnan on a camping trip in the wilderness. It is an expedition that all of them are woefully unprepared for. They can't even make it out of the camping supply store without getting into trouble. Things get worse for them when Fionnan's future brother in law, a man's man, tracks the hapless and effeminate group down. Despite an ending that you can see coming a mile away, this insightful and genuinely hilarious episode of male bonding is a treat to watch. Seen at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.

Five middle-class Irish men go away on a hiking weekend to celebrate Fionnan's (Hugh O'Conor's) stag-party. They spend a lot of time and money trying to find the appropriate gear, and look forward to enjoying themselves. Unfortunately their leisure-time looks as if it might ruined by the presence of The Machine (aka Richard) (Peter McDonald), a boorish bully, who just so happens to be Fionnan's future brother-in-law. The basic scenario of John Butler's film provides the basis for a weekend of discovery, as all six men realize that their preconceptions have turned out to be false. Fionnan, a slightly metrosexual personality who did not really want to go away at all, finds out something about his best friend Davin's (Andrew Scott's) past that puts their relationship to the test. The two Kevins (Michael Legge, Andrew Bennett) understand that they are not really social outcasts after all, even in the eyes of Fionnan's father (John Kavanagh). The Machine turns out to be a vulnerable person, covering up his personality deficiencies under a veil of bravado. On the other hand, he has a devil-may-care attitude to life that exposes some of the middle- class pretensions of his five fellow- hikers. Butler and McDonald's script contains some very funny moments, especially when we see Davin trying to negotiate plans for his wedding with the planner Linda (Justine Mitchell), who obviously has little or no clue about what he is saying. The film contains some neat set pieces - notably the sequence where The Machine inadvertently sets fire to the tent, forcing the hikers to live rough, something they had never really anticipated. They had simply viewed the hike as an extension of their middle-class existence; now they have really been catapulted 'back to nature'. Later on they throw off their clothes and go for a naked midnight swim; unfortunately the idea goes horribly wrong, forcing all of them to confront themselves totally unclothed, both physically and emotionally. The basic scenario of THE BACHELOR WEEKEND (aka THE STAG) might be a familiar one - the importance of male bonding as a means of self- discovery - but the material has been handled with a light touch. In the end the film has an important point to make about friendship and trust as the basis of any effective relationship between people, irrespective of their gender. Needless to say, the action ends happily with everyone reconciled and Davin manages to wed his fiancée Ruth (Amy Huberman).

My girlfriends and I were so excited to see this movie, thinking it was going to be a fun movie. Characters start to make bad decisions and one thing leads to another and so on. You get the idea. The Stag will either surprise or disappoint you, depending on what your expectations are. Still, it's a film BOTH genders can enjoy, and it shouldn't be limited to "a movie for the ladies." In the end, what the audience gets is a casserole of movie elements and little of the satisfaction that comes from watching these types of movies. The sound editing was weird to me. The main plot of the film was constantly being interrupted. Don't make a mistake of watching this film if you have any self respect.

A nice find... The film starts off with a few cliché' (though tolerable) scenes, but once "The Machine" (Peter McDonald) enters the film, the movie sets off on its eccentric (and sometimes hilarious) adventure in the wood. A feel good movie that has quite a few funny scenes, with just the right amount of sincere "sweet moments" thrown into the mix. Compared to The Hangover series, The Bachelor Weekend is more believable and draws you into connecting with the characters. A good film you may have missed!

I checked the reviews before wasting a couple of hours on this and it seemed that there were a lot of 10's and a lots score closer to 0's, Its always hard to know who is correct in this situation. Believe me the scores closer to 0's are spot on. I'm guessing you know enough background about the film from the title and trailers.. 6 lads on a hill walking stag weekend... right? Billed as a comedy but this is as far from comedy as you could get. Its completely devoid of any humour... They try so hard to be original and they really aren't. Predictable and truth be told pretty boring. Yes they put the characters as the new style D4 Irish rather than the stereotyped drinkers and fighters which are so often portrayed in films but they were equally bad and offensive. The only exception to the group is the one character called "The Machine" who is called "The Machine" with the emphasis on "the" in every other line in the script...oh dear god please stop... it couldn't have been more annoying. Even his sister phones him and says "Hi, The Machine"... seriously so annoying. I don't know what angle they were trying with the gay couple...were they trying to shock us on film 30 years too late? Were they trying to shock us that Ireland has a gay community??... this couple in a relationship of 6 years in every scene stuck to each other like love sick teenagers... *gasp a man hugging another man... the outrage... I can only assume they did that so that you could differentiate from the other 3 male characters (not including "The Machine" because you really wouldn't know who was supposed to be gay. Apologies to the gay community if you are all really loved up after 6 years together...maybe I'm just an old cynic Anyway... it was all very obvious what was going to happen... losing their clothes, chased by the dog and the farmer....absolute pants. To conclude with an overly sentimental sickly best man speech and bizarre poorly mimed cover version of a U2 song after a nonsensical out of place rallying speech for the people of Ireland... Oh one last thing... accents!!???!!! Peter McDonald who is a pretty fine actor what was going on with the accent?.. Born in Dublin yet it jumped from the North, to the midlands to an American accent... and the rest sounded English Do yourself a favour and don't watch this

I'm not quite sure why this film has so many bad reviews. I know a lot of people saw the trailer and dismissed it as a Hangover wannabe, but this film was far from it. The cast was amazing and the film had a surprising depth to it, I was expecting a silly stag comedy, but instead got a movie that was really character-focused, rather than situation-focused. I do disagree with the film being renamed for American audiences, because the film has the word "Stag" in it multiple times, and honestly, you can sort of work it out. "The Bachelor Weekend" really does sound like the name of a bad rip off of The Hangover from a $2 shop. The only other issue I had with it was the lack of chemistry between the bride and the groom, but they're not seen together much in the film so it's pretty much a non-issue. Don't watch this film if you're looking for a trashy comedy, it's probably not for you. It actually felt a bit like The World's End, there was plenty of comedy, and the cinematography was brilliant, but the main focus was on a few metro men in their mid thirties being strung along by a madman.

This film is a beautifully shot and directed film which is both funny and very heart-warming. The final scene will bring a tear to the hardest of hearts. The laughs come quick and fast and the characters are well developed. John Butler manages to show us real people and makes the characters easy to relate to. While there will be many comparisons to The Hangover, this is almost the opposite end of the spectrum. The situation and individuals are more like a real version of a stag weekend that many viewers will recognize. The gay couple are also refreshingly not used for laughs. Andrew Scott delivers a very solid performance and Hugh O'Connor is definitely one to watch. Peter McDonald in his role of THE MACHINE is hilarious and will have you snorting with laughter.

The best part about the movie was the Irish Countryside and it is easy to get a grant from the Irish Film Board. A lot of the scenes appear to have been duplicated from other movies. The jokes were stale and predictable. A lot of the actors were miscast, especially, if the movie was geared towards an American audience. There was little chemistry between the bride and groom and there was no originality to the movie. I felt little empathy for the characters as they represented everything I disliked about the celtic tiger. The movie had potential, but needed to be worked on a few months more. The budget was clearly minute, so fair play for delivering a film on such a tight budget.

I sat down in the mood for a nice little light hearted comedy, as the previous reviews on IMDb had promised. A look at the nine and ten out of ten scores and an overall of 6.5 gave me the idea that if not brilliant, would have some laughs and be a decent film. How wrong I was. This is the sort of film that has adopted the 'all men are useless, clueless, fools, but in touch with their feminine sides' school of film making. The main characters are clunky, inept caricatures that one could have been forgiven for thinking that they had originally been written as pre adolescent girls, not grown men. Their ineptitude was the set up for the "comedy", which was just not funny and seemed very contrived. It all just served to irritate after a very short while and continued to do so as the film progressed. The line up consisted of some rather quite good actors and i'm not sure if it was the awful script, bed set ups, bad direction, miscasting or a combination of all the above, but non of their previously seen talent could have cut through this drivel with a chainsaw. I should think most of them will be embarrassed to have this movie on their C.V's. I think all in all, the high rating given to this film must be from interested parties skewing the figures and will in time even out when more people have faced the ordeal of sitting through this lame excuse for a comedy. i would avoid this one, go paint the fence or something, it'll be more productive.