Bachelor Party

If you want an idea of what Tom Hanks' career could have looked like had he not gotten the lead role in Splash, you need look no further than his other movie from 1984. Hanks plays a flippantly unserious yet unassuming guy whose friends take him out for a night of debauchery on the eve of his wedding to his longtime girlfriend. In the picture, we can see why Hanks was quickly becoming a go-to guy for this type of energetic, non-stop, wisecracking character. Whether acting alone, like in a hilarious scene where he cooks dinner for his girlfriend while riffing on each ingredient, to his raw sarcasm in a great brunch scene with his future in-laws who obviously do not approve of their daughter's choice of husband, to the way he interacts with his buddies raucous antics, Hanks makes us laugh and convinces us that marriage to this guy would not be the biggest mistake in the world.

Hanks' fiancée is played by Tawny Kitaen, who made her debut earlier in 1984 playing the titular role in the French action comedy The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak, which is kind of a soft-core rip-off of Raiders of the Lost Ark. She makes an excellent sparring partner for Hanks, as do the actors playing her stuffy parents (George Grizzard and Barbara Stuart). The guys who play Hanks' buddies are more of a mixed bag. Grease 2 costar Adrian Zmed and Barry Diamond from Class Reunion score some laughs, but Gary Grossman as his hooker-procuring pal and Bradford Bancroft as his suicidal old friend are pretty insufferable.

Written by Police Academy scribes Neal Israel and Pat Proft, the film has a nice structure that keeps things moving along, introducing us to all the characters and then cutting back and forth between the shenanigans the guys are involved with and the bachelorette adventure Kitaen's character has with her gal pals. The broad humor runs the gambit from Airplane-style sight gags to rapid-fire jokes to low-LOW-brow gags in the poorest of tastes. Some of these gags are kind of inspired, like a fight scene at a 3D film fest, and others are of the racist, homophobic, and misogynistic varieties most people expect when they think of R-rated comedies from this era. Still, this is a terrific premise, and there's as much good stuff packed in as gags that just never landed well. There are also some cool needle drops, as well as a fun original title track by Oingo Boingo. But the reason we still remember this film is because of how witty and charming Hanks is. Even in a movie that's trying to be trashy, Hanks can't help but provide a touch of class.