Bachelor Bait: A weird, old-school comedy about bad advice

Is it worth watching?

Honestly, you probably only want to watch Bachelor Bait if you have a real soft spot for 1930s screwball comedies that don’t quite have the budget or the jokes to stick the landing. It’s light, it’s fast, and it’s mostly harmless. If you hate old-timey slapstick or characters who make the absolute worst decisions possible, just skip this one. You won't miss much.

The whole setup starts with a clerk getting fired for being, well, kind of a nuisance at the Marriage License Bureau. It’s the kind of premise that makes you want to roll your eyes, but Stuart Erwin plays it with this specific, wide-eyed confusion that’s actually pretty endearing.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Bachelor Bait (1934) through its definitive frames.

Wait, what’s going on here?

The movie is mostly just a string of misunderstandings. Our lead character decides to become a matchmaker because he thinks he’s got the touch. Of course, he’s an absolute disaster. There is a scene about twenty minutes in where he tries to set up a client, and the silence in the room gets so thick you could cut it with a knife. It’s not even a dramatic silence; it’s just awkward.

The pacing is a bit all over the place. Sometimes it feels like the director was in a huge hurry to get to the next set, and other times we’re just stuck in a room watching people stammer over their lines. It reminds me a bit of the frantic, messy energy you find in The Make-Believe Wife, but without the same kind of charm.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Bachelor Bait (1934) through its definitive frames.

• The supporting cast looks like they’re having a contest to see who can act the most surprised.
• There is one specific hat in the second act that is just... enormous. Why is it so big?
• The office sets look like they were built out of cardboard and hope.

The movie gets noticeably better once the lead stops trying to be a genius matchmaker and just starts bumbling through his own romance. It’s funny because it feels so human to watch someone try to be helpful and just make everything objectively worse for everyone involved. 😅

I’m not saying it’s a masterpiece. It’s definitely not. But there’s something nice about how the film doesn't try to teach you a lesson. It doesn't care about the 'human condition.' It just wants to show you a guy being a total dork for an hour.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Bachelor Bait (1934) through its definitive frames.

I caught myself looking at the background extras more than the actual plot at one point. There’s a guy in the back of the office scene who just keeps filing the same three papers over and over for like five minutes. It’s hilarious if you look for it. It’s the kind of detail that makes me think the set was just a fun place to be, even if the movie itself is a bit of a mess.

It’s not as polished as The Skin Game, and it certainly lacks the bite of some other films from that era. But if you’ve got a rainy afternoon and nothing to do, you could do worse. Just don’t expect to have your life changed by it. It’s just a movie, after all.