They (the people that do such things) just had their first test screenings of Christian Slater's latest film entitled VERY BAD THINGS, and guess what? Two people actually liked it. Though I have to admit having Cameron Diaz in it, at least gets Siskel and Ebert in line. I'll never forget them pouring over her performance in THE MASK. Anyway, the first review comes from Buddy Factor, and these reviews do contain SPOILERS so tread lightly...
Now I know what you are thinking. "Very Bad Things? I've never heard of it". Well neither did I until I got an invitation to a test screening. It stars: Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz, Jon Favreau, Daniel Stern, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Jeremy Piven, and is written and directed by Peter Berg. It is about 5 guys who go to Vegas to have a bachelor party for the character played by Jon Favreau who is getting married to Cameron Diaz.
While at Vegas they have fun at the hotel drinking, smoking, doing coccaine, and they hire a whore. Jeremy Piven is screwing the whore in the bathroom and in the heat of the moment she slips and has a hook coat hanger on the wall stab into the back of her head. They decide to bring her out to the desert and bury her but a security guard sees her when he comes to the room to check on what the noise was they were making before. Christian Slater kills him too with a cork screw. He stabs him and they shove him in the bathroom where he screams over and over while pounding on the door. Now they have two bodies to get rid of. Everything goes fine until they get home and Daniel Stern starts to freak out thinking that he is being smoked out by the FBI.
During an argument outside of the wedding rehearsal when they are trying to get Daniel Stern to keep quiet about everything, Jeremy Piven tries to ram Daniel Sterns mini van (which he is always concerned about) but accidently rams Daniel. Daniel whispers something to his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn) before he dies.
Meanwhile Jeremy is upset about the whole thing, Christian Slater thinks Jeanne Tripplehorn will tell the police about what happened in Vegas even though they tried to convince her he was delusional and the only thing that was done wrong was Daniel sleeping with the whore several times (which he didn't do). So Christian strangles Jeanne and shoots Jeremy making it look like Jeremy strangled Jeanne in a jealouse rage and shot himself. Jon was in Daniels will and after paying off the mini van and house him and Camron Diaz are left with $14,000 , their dog, and two kids (which are complete brats).
At the wedding Christian gets in a fight with Jon and Cameron, who has been going insane trying to get the wedding to go as planned, comes in and ramms Christians face several times with a coat rack. So she demands that after the wedding Jon takes Christian, the dog, and the last of his five friends out to the desert to bury Christian and kill his last friend (sorry I don't remember his name but he was the one in Alien 4 who had the alien pop out of his chest in the end) and the dog. He decides to let his friend and the dog live and when they are driving back they hit another car and they go flying through the windsheild.
The closing scene has Camron cleaning the house, Jon is in the back with his friend and the dog trying to teach the two kids to be good boy scouts or something. And oh yea, Jon has no legs and keeps falling out of his wheelchair, his friend is paralyzed moving himself in his wheelchair in circles with a controller stick in his mouth, the dog is missing a leg, the kids are calling Jon a "Fucking cripple", and Cameron goes crazy running out into the street crying on the ground.
It was extremly gorey, everyong did a good job and I hope they don't change anything about it before they release it. (in a way I hoped, since I hadn't heard anything about it yet, that it was a fake title and they were going to show us Godzilla or something. I kept looking for Roland or Dean with the producers before the show but Very Bad Things was still great.)
Then we have this review from little Jimmie Olsen...
I'm not sure if you've had many reports on the black comedy Very Bad Things but since I saw a screening tonight I thought I'd tell you about it anyways because it's a quality flick.
Starring Cameron Diaz, Christian Slater, Daniel Stern, and Jon Favreau (of Swingers fame) the movie is about a guy (Favreau) about to get married who swings out to Vegas with his buddies for a bachelor party. What would be a bachelor party with out a stripper/prostitute, so naturally they have one perform, and then, well, some bad things happen and she ends up dead. From this point on chaos ensues as the characters try to deal with the situation and then return to their everyday lives. I won't spoil the plot for you but the film is black comedy that's willing to take dark chances for the sake of humor, and it rightfully succeeds. Slater is back in all his Heathers/True Romance psychotic glory and Diaz is a real pleasure on screen, her precise and swift delivery of dialogue would make Howard Hawks proud.
Keep an eye out for this one, I don't think they'll release it in the summer, seems more suited for the fall, but it's a great black comedy.
