The title says it all

>> Very Bad Things lives up to its billing

by MATTHEW HAYS

In one of the more idiotic pronouncements in his book Hollywood vs. America, film critic and moral crusader Michael Medved argues that filmmakers are prone to make nasty movies which focus on immoral things simply to impress their friends and others in the industry.

Though virtually everything else is wrong with that nutty book, after seeing Very Bad Things, I can't help but feel director-writer Peter Berg (best known for his recurring role on Chicago Hope) made this dark and dirty film as one giant, empty pose.

The film's desperate premise grows out of the prenuptial celebrations of Jon Favreau, who is set to marry the eager and selfish Cameron Diaz. Favreau heads out with his band of buddies for a stag party, consuming copious amounts of coke and hiring an Asian hooker. One of the men embarks on a private tryst with the gal and, suddenly, the hooker is lying dead in a puddle of blood in a hotel washroom. The fellas must then decide what to do. Soon enough, the bodies and panic begin to pile up; meanwhile, all involved must learn to keep their mouths shut so the cops don't catch on. Things escalate predictably from there.

Perhaps I'm being a bit naughty for getting so down on a film like Very Bad Things. After all, American filmmakers are generally trashed for being too darn happy, sentimental and uplifting in their outlook. Europeans and the independents, conventional wisdom goes, are the ones who really get black comedy, tragedy and ambiguity. In both Happiness and the forthcoming Danish film Celebration, for example, the filmmakers used a sharp and cynical perspective to make points about broader issues of family, human relations and basic honesty.

Very Bad Things does none of this. Posturing itself as a black comedy, the film meanders from one murder to the next, with the idea that gratuitous gore is somehow inherently arty and thus redeemable.

Obviously, I've no problem with onscreen violence. Even a slasher movie like Halloween had something to say (albeit rather slight messages). But Very Bad Things is all bluster, gore, slick camera moves and nothing much else. Christian Slater plays an asshole (again) and he's certainly good at it. Grinning and grinding his teeth at the prospect of killing anyone who might get in the way of the cover-up, he's the film's centrepiece--an amoral, self-centred, suburban bastard. Armed with the offscreen baggage of the charge of assaulting his girlfriend a few months back, the actor is repulsively well-cast. Repulsing audiences, though, simply isn't enough. Despite the spirited cast here, Very Bad Things simply winds up boring terribly.

Very Bad Things opens Friday, November 27