Cast: Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz, Daniel Stern, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Jon Favreau, Jeremy Piven, Leland Orser
Director: Peter Berg
Producers: Cindy Cowan, Diane Nabatoff, Michael Schiffer
Screenplay: Peter Berg
Cinematography: David Hennings
Music: Stewart Copeland
U.S. Distributor: Polygram
What is it with Cameron Diaz and offbeat weddings? In Feeling Minnesota, she runs off with her new husband's brother shortly after the shotgun nuptials. In My Best Friend's Wedding, she nearly loses the groom to Julia Roberts. And now, in Very Bad Things, several guests can't make the ceremony because they're in the morgue. But nothing -- not even a few bodies -- is going to stop her from having the wedding she has waited 27 years for.
Actually, Diaz only has a supporting role in Very Bad Things, actor-turned-director Peter Berg's debut behind the camera. The film, a darkly comic thriller that is more bizarre than humorous, is sort of a mix between Quentin Tarantino and John Dahl, and borrows ideas and trademarks from both film maker's arsenals. For example, the shot of five men approaching the camera in slow motion formation is straight out of Reservoir Dogs, and the plot as a whole owes more than a little to The Last Seduction (in which Berg played Linda Fiorentino's dupe). The dialogue, which includes a number of topical ellipses, will have a familiar rhythm for anyone who has seen a movie by Tarantino or one of his numerous wannabes.
Plot-wise, Very Bad Things is certainly clever, and contains enough twists and turns to keep even the most hardened veteran of noir thrillers guessing. Actually, that's part of the problem. The movie is so determined to confound viewers that the seams in the script start to show through. We lose our sense of the reality of Berg's world and find ourselves analyzing his methods of plotting, especially all of the contrivances and coincidences necessary to pull everything off.
The film initially seems like it might be a male bonding picture. We're introduced to five friends who are on their way to a bachelor party in Vegas. The groom-to-be is Kyle Fisher (Jon Favreau), who is only days away from being manacled to the beautiful-but-insecure Laura (Diaz). Throwing the party, which includes gambling, cocaine, drinking, and a stripper/prostitute, are his closest chums: real estate hotshot Robert Boyd (Christian Slater), straightlaced Adam Berkow (Daniel Stern), jokester Michael Berkow (Jeremy Piven), and antisocial Charles Moore (Leland Orser). Everything is going fine until the mishap. During a particularly energetic bout of sex, Michael accidentally kills the hooker. As the five men are debating the best way to dispose of the body ("a 105 pound problem that has to be moved from point A to point B"), a security guard visits the room, sees the evidence, and is messily dispatched by a quick-thinking Robert. Now, the male half of the wedding party has two bodies to get rid of and a lot of blood to clean up before dawn ("this room looks like the Manson family stayed here a month"). And the body count has only begun to mount. Dissension within the ranks results in an unstable situation that has Adam and Michael at each other's throats, with Robert watching and waiting, ready to act decisively.
When Hitchcock made thrillers, he knew the importance of building characters that would keep viewers in the story. '90s noir film makers like Dahl and the Coen brothers use a similar approach, and that's a key element missing from Very Bad Things. The characters are without charm or charisma. They're nothing more than plot devices -- a necessary method of impelling the story along. We don't relate to or sympathize with any of the men (or women) in this film They're superficial, and each one can effectively be described by an adjective or two.
Presumably because of his clout within the Hollywood community, Berg has been able to assemble an impressive cast, and, despite the limitations of their roles, they all do fine jobs. Not surprisingly, Diaz and Christian Slater are the standouts. Both have parts that require them to go a little over-the-top -- Diaz as a Jekyll and Hyde bride and Slater as a borderline-psycho. Jon Favreau (Swingers) makes for a rather bland protagonist, although the character is supposed to be the reactive type. And Daniel Stern's performance as a man suffering a nervous breakdown, while it may be on-target, is exceedingly irritating.
On the landscape of thriller-comedies, Very Bad Things falls into the shadowy realm of mediocre entries like the recent Clay Pigeons and the aforementioned Feeling Minnesota. It's entertaining to a degree, but lacks all of the elements necessary to form a truly compelling motion picture. The tone, which veers uncertainly between dark comedy and suspense, is uneven, and the characters are not vivid enough to stabilize the load of a shifting, runaway plot. The result is a colorful wreck that, while not uninteresting, doesn't really succeed, even on its own terms.
© 1998 James Berardinelli