WILD THINGS
Neve Campbell gets an opportunity to
move beyond her earnest, mopey Party of Five persona in
this so-trashy-it's-entertaining whodunit from John McNaughton,
working in all-out-sleazy Joe Eszterhasian mode. This latest entry
in the burgeoning Florida noir genre is like an Eszterhas
picture with a funny bone. Matt Dillon is a high-school guidance
counselor accused of rape by troubled pupil Campbell and pouty
cheerleader Denise Richards, and Kevin Bacon flares his nostrils
with campy gusto as the cop on Dillon's tail — there's so
much pouting and nostril-flaring in this film you keep expecting
Heather Locklear to make a cameo appearance. After a rather slow
start, Wild Things starts cooking once the delightfully
droll Bill Murray steps in as Dillon's shyster lawyer. Make sure
you don't leave early — you'll miss the best part of the
picture, an ingenious end credits sequence in which McNaughton
shows, detail by detail, how the culprits got away with murder.
© 1999 Jim Aquino