# Wild Things (1998)

### reviewed by
Ryan Davis

    Wild Things
    3/26/98

The neatest part about Wild Things is how it forced me to watch the credits. By revealing key parts to the plot(I use this term loosely.) in-between the credits, the filmmakers managed to keep three-fourths of the audience in their seats until the credits completed, an impressive achievement.

I can only tell you a small portion of the movies plot, or you will miss guessing the laughable plot twist. High school senior Kelly Van Ryan(Denise Richards) falls in love with her guidance counselor, Sam Lombardo(Matt Dillon). Kelly tries several times to lure him into an intimate relationship, but when her attempts fail she accuses him of rape. Jumping on the rape charge bandwagon Suzie Toller(Neve Campbell) accuses Sam, with the two accusations he is quickly taken to court. Sam, out of money and desperate for a lawyer, hires a sleazy insurance fraud attorney, Ken Bowden(Bill Murray, in the best performance of the film.). Following a confusing trial Sam's case is dismissed and all charges are dropped, this is done by way of several predictable plot twists. When Sam is cleared of the charges he sues Kelly's rich mother and receives a little over eight million. So now you have to figure out who's playing who, and who should anyone trust? There are so many plot twist in this movie its almost funny, its sad that all the twist are ultra predictable and illogical.

The cast is, on the most part, highly attractive. They all get opportunities through the film to display their bodies, there is even a threesome scene with Denise Richards, Matt Dillon, and Neve Campbell. The best actual performance is that of Bill Murray as the lawyer who makes his money off insurance fraud, its a hilarious piece of work and he steals all the scenes he's in. I could spend all day pointing out how bad the other performances were, but then I wouldn't be able to tell you about the good parts.

This is a funny movie, I don't know if it was meant to be serious but I was laughing out loud at some of the scenes. Maybe it was just the implausibility or maybe the terrible dialogue, but it was just really funny. If you are looking for a entertaining, erotic, campy, and funny movie, than this could be for you. If you want a good intelligent thriller, look elsewhere.

    Grade: B-
    ------------------------------
    Ryan Davis
    rjdavis@shore.intercom.net
    --------------------------------
    Movie Reviews and More:
    http://www.intercom.net/user/rjdavis/

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews