Aren't parties supposed to be fun?

Actor Don Murray died earlier this year at the age of 94. One of his movies that's been sitting on my DVR for some time now is The Bachelor Party. I'd seen part of it from a previous TCM showing ages ago, but for whatever reason didn't watch the whole thing, which is why I made a point of recording it when it showed up again. This time, I did watch all the way through.

Don Murray is not the bachelor; his character is Charlie, a New York bookkeeper married to Helen, very recently having found out that his wife Helen is pregnant with their first child. Charlie loves Helen, but having knocked her up presents some problems for them. Charlie has been going to night school to study to become an accountant, and was hoping to be able to take a year off work to complete all the courses at lightning speed while the couple lived off Helen's wages. But her getting pregnant means she's going to have to quit work, and Charlie is going to have to drag out his education. He tells this on the way to work to his colleague Ken (Larry Blyden), who is having issues in his own marriage.

Meanwhile, both of them have another colleague, Arnold (Philip Abbott), who is engaged and getting married that weekend. So the bachelor party, being planned by another co-worker Eddie (Jack Warden), is going to be that night. Neither of the married men is certain they want to go, but eventually the two of them decide they will join in, along with another man who works in their cramped office, Walter (E.G. Marshall).

It's a relatively small party, and a good portion of it is held in public, as the men start off as a restaurant and then go bar-hopping. Along the way, Charlie runs across a strange woman, credited only as "The Existentialist" (Carolyn Jones). Each of the married men starts revealing that perhaps marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be, or at least a lot more work than just being in love. Arnold even lets on that he's not certain why he got engaged in the first place.

Against the backdrop of all this, we learn that the married women aren't finding marriage a bed of roses either. We learn about Charlie's impending fatherhood from a conversation his wife is having with her sister-in-law. While the men are out partying, the two sisters-in-law spend some time in Charlie and Helen's apartment, talking about their difficulties. Helen isn't certain Charlie is happy about becoming a father, and the sister-in-law came over more to announce she's convinced her own husband is having yet another affair.

The Existentialist had invited Charlie to a bohemian party in Greenwich Village and he, by now sick of the bachelor party, decides to go to this bohemian gathering. At least she'll get him to think and be honest with himself as to whom he really loves.

I have to admit that I didn't exactly like The Bachelor Party. It feels way too talky to me, and filled with characters who aren't exactly likeable, although that might be because the situation itself, with a bunch of men getting drunk and doing drunk things, isn't particularly appealing to me. Other people are probably going to like The Bachelor Party a lot more than I did.