Very Bad Things

Review Date: May 22, 1999

Last night, I watched a very ugly movie. This is my first "fake movie review" for this site, and I had to pick this movie to watch. Well, to be honest, my wife picked it. That doesn't make it any easier.

Very Bad Things is a movie about a group of guys who drive to Vegas for a bachelor party. While they're there, they kill a stripper and a security guard and bury them in the desert. Once they get home they keep killing people. This is a comedy. Really.

Now I get the concept of a black comedy. I've seen and enjoyed several. I just think this movie would have worked better as a comedy if it had actually been funny. Instead it was shocking in its utter lack of humanity. I was physically tired after watching it.

Have you seen it? Do you get what I mean? If you haven't seen it this next part won't mean much to you. This is the part that justifies the name Bruce Willis Movie Reviews for this site.

It was difficult to decide which character to replace with Bruce for this movie. It seems to me you throw him in there anywhere and you've completely changed the dynamic of the film. Replace Christian Slater and the movie wouldn't have gotten far, because Bruce would have had a different plan, no one would have argued with him, his plan would have worked, etc. Everybody else in the movie was a complete wuss. Obviously throwing Bruce in there would have been like putting a wolf in the bunny cage.

Publicity shot from Very Bad Things website So for lack of a better answer, I decided to make Bruce the star of the movie, Kyle Fisher, Jon Favreau's character. Let's start at the beginning. Kyle is getting chewed out over the phone by his fiancee. Now there are any number of ways that Bruce might react to this situation, and it's not an unknown situation for him. Witness his marital troubles in the Die Hard series (as well as in real life. What's wrong with you, Demi?). But I see Bruce reacting in this way: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, wedding, chairs, I got you, I'll take care of it. No... would you..." He holds the phone away from his ear for a minute and makes yadda yadda yadda expression, before returning the receiver to his ear. "Yes. I said I'd take care of it! Alright." The guys head for Vegas.

After an evening of partying in Vegas, the stripper shows up at their hotel room. Christian Slater's character Boyd informs Kyle(Bruce) that she's bought and paid for, anything goes. Kyle doesn't hesitate. He takes the stipper into the next room and gives her what for. Jeremy Piven's character Mike, depraved lunatic that he is, barges into the room demanding his turn. Enraged, he attacks Kyle and is beaten into a pulp.

The rest of the characters are really pissed off by this, even though they really can't stand Mike. They gang up on Kyle and have gotten the better of him when a gunshot is heard. We see the stripper, having retrieved a gun from her bag. "He's the only real man in this room, " she says. "Let him go." She and Kyle leave.

Boyd is really mad. This bachelor party he planned hasn't gone at all like he expected. He berates the other guys, telling them "We're going to get Kyle, and we're going to bring him back here, and we're going to have a good time, dammit!" He informs them that he's pretty sure where they've gone, and they just have one stop to make on the way.

In the meantime, Kyle and Tina (the stripper) have arrived at her apartment, which is very nice (at $900 for a strip job, plus $500 for each "extra" she has to be doing pretty well). While looking around her apartment he finds a secret door in the back of a closet. He opens it up and finds an enormous cache of weapons.

Boyd and the guys stop by a club. He leaves them sitting at the bar while he goes and talks to a mob-looking guy. He tells the guy that Tina had sex with Kyle--without charging him. The mob guy, whose name, for the sake of argument, is Dino, is furious and gathers some of his goons.

Back at the apartment, Tina tells Kyle that her boyfriend is a big-time arms smuggler, and sometimes stashes shipments at her apartment. She goes on to tell him a story about her boyfriend getting angry at one of his friends, blah blah blah, exposition-type scene. She tells him that she's wanted to get out of the relationship for a while, but doesn't know how.

Just then there is a knock on the door. "Tina!!" we hear Dino shout. Kyle and Tina grab as many weapons as they can carry while Dino shouts threats from outside. A rifle butt breaks a hole in the door. A grenade is thrown in. Kyle and Tina jump from the window as the apartment explodes behind them.

An epic battle ensues in which many recognizable Vegas monuments are destroyed. Mike's brother Adam dies almost right away. Then Mike is killed when a hotel falls on him. Finally it comes down to Kyle and Tina on one side, both with a dozen small wounds on them, and Moore, Boyd, and Dino on the other. The classic showdown, with burning and exploding casinos all around. Kyle tells Moore, "You don't have to be a part of this. You can walk away right now." Moore mutters something about always wanting to join Greenpeace and leaves. Then the gunplay begins. It's a ferocious firefight, but at the end, Tina and Kyle are the victors; Boyd, Dino, and the city of Las Vegas are the losers.

Tina asks Kyle to stay with her, but he tells her that he's getting married in a week, and he has to go back. He walks off, and she looks around her at all the destruction and walks off in a different direction.

Kyle gets back to town, and immediately his fiancee demands to know if he's taken care of the chair situation. In the midst of a barrage of demands from her, he grabs her and kisses her hard.

Bruce(Kyle) goes and takes care of the chair situation in a way only he can: by intimidating the rental place into giving them the chairs they originally ordered. The wedding goes on as planned. The minister asks (as in all Hollywood weddings) if anyone present has any objections to the wedding taking place.

The church doors bang open, and Boyd (Christian Slater), looking Heathers-ragged, bursts in and says, "Well, ma'am, I think I've got a little something to say about that." He starts to aim the gun he's holding upright at his shoulder.

Suddenly there's a shot, and a bullet hole appears in his chest. Kyle looks and sees his bride holding a smoking gun. "Nothing is going to ruin my wedding!" she growls. They both turn to the minister, and...

END CREDITS ROLL

So you see, this would have been a much better movie with Bruce in it. Since the comedy didn't work anyway, we replace it with some good old-fashioned ass-whuppins and explosions. The stripper doesn't have to die, and neither does the security guard. Christian Slater's character is still an asshole, but on a much larger and more effective scale. The other friends are still wusses, but hey, you can't help everyone. And the embarrassing and poorly thought out end scene, which I don't even want to describe, is completely removed. As is most of the rest of the movie, but hey, if it had been that great in the first place, I wouldn't have had to write this review.