VERY BAD THINGS Review by Victory A. Marasigan http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~vmaras1/reviewsidx.html
I have to hand it to director Peter Berg. With his first feature Very Bad Things, he's delivered a story so alternatingly hilarious and repulsive that by the time it's over, you don't know whether you actually liked the movie or not. Indeed, I don't think any film in recent memory has caused such large groups of moviegoers to get up and walk out of the theater at regular intervals. It's not that the film is poorly made; it's that Very Bad Things grabs a hold of you and squeezes until you literally can't take it any more.
At its outset, Berg fools us into thinking we'll be watching a City Slickers-type weekend adventure, as five young-and-up-and-coming 30-somethings (wild guys Jeremy Piven, Daniel Stern, Christian Slater, Leland Orser, and John Favreau) pack into a minivan and head off to Vegas. Their mission: to celebrate that time-honored night of controlled chaos - the bachelor party. Groom Favreau is excited but understandably tense, as his bride-to-be (Cameron Diaz) has voiced quite clearly her disapproval of the ritual.
Once in their Vegas hotel suite, the boys really let loose, absorbing drugs and booze like sponges. Their raw ebullience turns to abject horror when, in a coital frenzy, one of the guys accidentally kills the prostitute they hired to entertain them. In the first of a series of panic-induced bad decisions, the guys decide to take the body out to the desert and bury it. Not just bury it, but chop it up with a store-bought electric turkey carver and bury it. Thank God for the 24-hour Target, huh?
Their hideous deed done, the sullied boys head home so the groom can prepare for his wedding. Of course, things are not as easy to sweep under the rug as they'd like. As in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," echoes of their crime haunt the boys as soon as they set foot back on home turf. In one particularly well-played scene, family-man Stern lets his paranoia engulf him to the point of hysteria while trying to buy snacks at a gas station/convenience store. His behavior doesn't go unnoticed, and it isn't long before the boys' need for damage control leads to an even larger body count.
Though it seems inconceivable that humor could be mined out of the deadly serious premise I've just described, this film is a comedy. It is in some ways a variation on There's Something About Mary, with the macabre substituted for just plain gross. The proceedings are made all the more shocking by the fact that these are normal guys-next-door doing...well, very bad things.
Though the five leads seem more suited to the demands of wacky comedy, some (especially Ellen regular Jeremy Piven) are able pull off unhinged grief and mania quite effectively. The reserved Favreau, the film's moral anchor, makes good as the tense groom who just wishes the madness would all just go away. Slater's aphasic Robert is a look at what his Heathers character might have become if he'd survived that film and gone into real estate. Diaz, as Favreau's future bride, turns out to be the film's most eccentric personality, a woman so hell-bent on having her wedding she will stoop to new lows to make sure it isn't ruined. And Jeanne Tripplehorn, as Stern's seemingly homey wife, elicits some cheers when she explodes and goes ballistic on an intruding baddie.
Uneven but engrossing, Very Bad Things is able to generate some palpable crackling tension, a merit on which I can easily recommend it. Whether the carnage is too much is totally a matter of personal taste (which is so significant you can either add or subtract a whole letter grade from my own rating.)
Like the rest of the movie, Very Bad Things' final act cadenza is either laugh-out-loud hilarious or downright offensive. You can almost hear the Farelly brothers offering their approval. Whatever it's effect on you, you have to walk out of the theater after that.
GRADE: B
Reviewed October 15, 1998 at General Cinema Towson Commons, Towson, MD.
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