Very Bad Things (1998)
Directed by Peter Berg
Kyle Fisher has one last night to celebrate life as a single man before marrying Laura, so he sets out to Vegas with four of his best buddies. But a drug and alcohol filled night on the town with a stripper who goes all the way, turns into a cold night in the desert with shovels when the stripper goes all the way into a body bag after dying in their bathroom. And that's just the first of the bodies to pile up before Kyle can walk down the aisle...
12 connections found
View:
12 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Very Bad Things to
At times, this feels like a slightly milder version of Peter Berg's generally reviled Very Bad Things , a 1998 black comedy also about a Las Vegas bachelor party gone grotesquely awry.
This is the customary set up for a bachelor-party-gone-haywire comedy, in the style of Peter Berg’s equally-ludicrous Very Bad Things, followed by the flashback to two days ago.
The box office success of The Hangover puts into interesting context another movie about a bachelor party that goes wrong in Las Vegas.
But this is a comedy — or it’s meant to be — and as much as I would have loved for the sense of the sinister inherent in this concept to turn into something deeply, blackly funny (I’m thinking of Very Bad Things as a possible precedent for this, but The Hangover is never so audacious), Lucas and Moore and director Todd Phillips (School for Scoundrels, Starsky & Hutch) go for the easy, cheap laughs, things that will shock a juvenile mindset — a mother breastfeeding?
This is not a dopey/sweet Vegas comedy, like the bland What Happens in Vegas, or a nasty/nihilistic one, like the putrid Very Bad Things (both of which, now that I think about it, starred Cameron Diaz).
The remaining three men spend the next day and a half trying to piece together exactly what the hell happened during their long blackout, and this is where Jon Lucas and Scott Moore's beautifully constructed screenplay really shines; instead of a blow-by-blow orgy of decadence, a la Very Bad Things, it's laid out like a murder mystery.
I have to confess to a soft spot for Berg because he directed "Very Bad Things," a pitch-black nasty comedy that is one of my favorite films.
Instead, it recalls such ‘90s exercises in post-Tarantino nihilism as Very Bad Things.
If films like 1998’s Very Bad Things indulged in toxic masculinity then Fennell’s film takes glee in serving the male ego, and its female enablers, a much-needed comeuppance.
Advertisement
It's a shame that Peter Berg already named his bitter 1998 debut film Very Bad Things.
Since director Seth Gordon is playing things strictly for humorthere is very little pathos or earnestness involvedand the screenplay he is working with hasn't the cajones to delve into truly black comedic territory like, for example, 1998's ballsy, underrated "Very Bad Things," there is a distinct deficit of danger in the proceedings.
Peter Berg, the film's director, also captained "Very Bad Things," "The Kingdom" and a few other movies you've probably mistaken for TNT series when flipping through channels at 2 a.m.
By the time the interminable, seemingly endless climax rolls around, Battleship has definitively established itself as nothing less than an intolerable and flat-out reprehensible waste of time - which is surprising, certainly, given the presence of Berg behind the camera (ie the filmmaker is, after all, responsible for such entertaining fare as Hancock and Very Bad Things).
At the helm of Battleship is Berg, a director whose previous efforts include other action fare like The Rundown and The Kingdom as well as the dark comedy Very Bad Things and the teen football dramedy Friday Night Lights (Berg also served as the executive producer on the television series of the same name), and to be honest, while the action in his latest is the biggest he's ever tackled, it's definitely not Berg's best effort by a longshot.
Actor Peter Berg made a promising directorial debut with 1998’s Very Bad Things, but the quality of his movies has varied wildly since then (from Hancock to Friday Night Lights to The Kingdom).
Peter Berg’s Very Bad Things is the go-to example of this, and Lucia Aniello’s Rough Night from last year is the most recent.
Advertisement
Even Berg's bad-taste bachelor comedy, "Very Bad Things," was about bloody male bonding.
Whether it is the small town Texas football community of “Friday Night Lights,” the disastrous bachelor party of “Very Bad Things,” or the aliens and explosions of the under-rated “Battleship,” Berg understands the rhythms of guy-talk that circles around the still core of pure masculinity.
Actor, writer and director Peter Berg has had an up and down career (Battleship on the very bad end and Very Bad Things on the very good end).
By the time the interminable, seemingly endless climax rolls around, Battleship has definitively established itself as nothing less than an intolerable and flat-out reprehensible waste of time - which is surprising, certainly, given the presence of Berg behind the camera (ie the filmmaker is, after all, responsible for such entertaining fare as Hancock and Very Bad Things).
Though clearly an improvement over the despicable Battleship, Lone Survivor is nevertheless a disappointing, underwhelming actioner from Peter Berg - with the movie's riveting true-life story generally employed to bland and far-from-thrilling effect.
Since writing and directing Very Bad Things, Peter Berg, who's also an actor, has directed The Rundown (2003), Friday Night Lights (2004), The Kingdom (2007), and Hancock (2008).
Peter Berg, an actor ("The Last Seduction") turned director ("Very Bad Things," "The Rundown") does a fine job of establishing that sense of community excitement.
Adapted from the acclaimed nonfiction book by H.G. Bissinger, "Friday" is an engrossing slice of heartland American life,directed by Peter Berg ("Very Bad Things") in a gritty, cinéma vérité style.
Berg once played the bad-boy doctor on "Chicago Hope," then he made 1998's morally disgusting "Very Bad Things."
I'm a fan of Berg's--a big one of the anarchic, ugly Very Bad Things, a grudging one of The Rundown .