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Bachelor Party

Year: 1984
Director: Neal Israel
Writer: Neal Israel/Bob Israel/Pat Proft
Cast: Tom Hanks, Adrian Zmed, Tawny Kitaen, Wendie Jo Sperber
Tom Hanks hardly seems the same guy nowadays as he was in those days; fresh off the TV series Bosom Buddies with his unfeasibly large afro, he was a shoe in for the sort of frat boy comedy roles Bachelor Party offered, and now he's one of the biggest dramatic actors in the world.

Rick (Hanks) is getting married to the luscious Debbie (Kitaen, wife of Steve Tyler from Aerosmith, if memory serves), and the movie traces Rick and his buddies' last day at work as they get the party together and the free-for-all all-night party itself, the classic example of misbehaviour ('drugs to the right, hookers to the left').

At the same time, Debbie and her more stuck up friends have a bridal shower that quickly turns into something a little bawdier.

So many classic scenes ('Nick the Dick', the pill-munching donkey, 'There's a terrific moon out tonight') I still remember them all. That might have to do with taping the entire dialogue soundtrack off the video and playing it repeatedly in my room until I could recite the entire movie - including sound effects - from memory).

Not the funniest movie ever made, but with a healthy sense of the ridiculous and a gentle smattering of sight gags (courtesy of writer/directors Israel and Proft, who came from the Zucker brothers school of comedy), it was enough to stand the test of time when so many 1980s college comedies are long forgotten.

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