November 25, 1998 | If Quentin Tarantino had somehow commandeered There’s Something About Mary, you might have gotten something very much like Very Bad Things. Written and directed by Peter Berg, heretofore best known as one of the nicer doctors on TV’s Chicago Hope, this is a gleefully nasty mix of black comedy and bloody mayhem, completely uninhibited by any trace of good taste. You may hate yourself in the morning, but you will find yourself laughing at out loud at its worst excesses. Come to think of it, you may hate yourself even while you’re watching the movie. But you’ll probably laugh anyway.
It helps, of course, if you suspect the worst of Christian Slater after reading tabloid accounts of his off-screen misadventures. As Robert Boyd, the self-appointed leader of a bachelor party that gets horribly out of hand, Slater does everything but wink at the audience to signal his eagerness to live down to our expectations.
A prostitute accidentally dies during the riotous get-together in a Las Vegas hotel room. Not surprisingly, Robert is the first to suggest that calling the police wouldn’t be such a great idea. On the other hand, he thinks it would be a smart move to silence an intrusive security guard. With the utmost reluctance, the groom-to-be (Jon Favreau), the inadvertent killer (Jeremy Piven) and two not-so-innocent bystanders (Daniel Stern, Leland Orser) agree to help Robert bury their mistakes. Nothing good comes of this.
Very Bad Things may seem thoroughly amoral, but don’t be fooled: There’s actually a twisted sense of justice at work here. Cameron Diaz is splendidly monstrous as Laura, the fiancée of Favreau’s character, who seems almost as sociopathic as Robert while she prepares for her elaborate wedding. She will let nothing — not even a dead body or two, or three — spoil her big day. In the end, however, she gets exactly what she deserves. So does just about everyone else.
