|
Starring Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz, Jon Favreau, Daniel Stern, Jeremy Piven, Jeanne Tripplehorn,
Leland Orser. Directed by Peter Berg.
Kyle (Favreau) and Laura (Diaz) are about to married, and Laura is obsessing over every detail. She's planned her entire life to have the perfect wedding, and every thing from padded seats to making hundreds of little plastic chairs to make up the seating plan has been taken care of. Kyle and his buddies are off to Las Vegas for one last blowout of a bachelor party, before that "18-wheel cement truck (of married life) crushes every bone in your body", according to friend Michael (Piven). His slick best man Boyd (Slater) has organized the bash, complete with plenty of coke, hash, booze and an enthusiastic stripper. After plenty of gambling and partying, the stripper arrives and does her thing. And she is accidentally killed during the festivities. The boys flip out a bit, some wanting to phone the cops, but the majority decide its best to take the body into the desert and bury it, keeping this deep dark secret to themselves. Sounds simple, but things start getting a little complicated, and a few more bodies bite the dust to in a struggle to keep it all quiet. And Laura will let nothing, and I mean nothing stand in her way in completing her storybook wedding. If you're looking for redeeming social values, or any characters to sympathize with, don't bother looking here. Caring for other people is not an emotion Laura, Kyle and his buddies are aquainted with. Director Berg has fashioned a nasty story of male bonding gone wrong, where characters are motivated by lust, sibling rivalry, envy and greed. All of them. Even the ones that occasionally try to sneak in a twinge of conscience. The message here is that for many people the middle-class, family values veneer is only skin deep. When something goes wrong that might threaten their comfortable lifestyle, these people will drop any pretense of civilization to protect themselves. While most people do not possess these traits to the degree exhibited here, we may recognize them in ourselves and others more than we'd like to admit. Secondarily, the focus some have (and you know who you are) on the expensive, superficial trappings of weddings make a mockery of any concept of love or romance. The movie certainly is an excellent inducement towards eloping. The twists in the plot, including an unexpected ending, are consistently surprisingly. I often guessed wrong about where the story was heading, when an unusual (and usually nasty) twist would take the story in a new direction. Berg has decided the only way to play the material, and draw some laughs, is to play it straight and at full throttle. There is a considerable amount of yelling, too much actually, as the characters fight among themselves as they try to come to terms with what they have done. You will likely find yourself laughing at things you shouldn't. And these aren't the gross-out laughs the overrated There's Something About Mary provided - they rely more on the situation. The cast is quite good. Slater's performance contains the off-kilter malevolence he exhibited in Heathers, and he's fun to watch. Diaz is every bit as good, fashioning a character so hell-bent on her wedding she's every bit as mean as any of the guys. Piven, star of the very entertaining Cupid, continues to impress as the under-achieving brother living in the shadow of his more successful, sort of happily married sibling. And Stern displays an angry, dramatic side I've never seen before and is quite effective. If you like your humour very, very black, you might consider Very Bad Things.   
|