Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz
The bride-to-be (Diaz) is none too happy that her fiancé (Swingers' Jon Favreau) is off to Las Vegas for a bachelor weekend just days before their wedding. "You and your little fun bunch," she says dismissively of the four buddies who will accompany him. Fun isn't what happens next. But it is funny, sort of, in a sick-humor kind of way.
Very Bad Things, the promising, in-your-face first film written and directed by actor Peter Berg (Copland and TV's Chicago Hope), follows the lads to Vegas, where a stripper they've hired winds up dead. While her death is accidental, the ones that follow aren't. How much one likes this movie will depend upon how easily one accepts the subsequent killings as cause for chortling. I had trouble going there.
The movie does make clear that Berg knows what he's doing behind a camera. Things has visual panache, and Berg has coaxed amusingly manic performances from his talented cast (which includes Daniel Stern, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Jeremy Piven). And his final scene is a corker. (R)
Bottom Line: Sick, slick and more of a good thing than a bad one
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