The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 79

FRIDAY MARCH 20 1998 THE HERALD Neve Campbell in a role quite unlike the wholesome part she plays in Party of Five causes plenty of trouble for Kevin Bacon in Wild Things Wild Things: Here's how to make a great bad movie executive-produced barely registers as the skeptical detective been a long while since Bacon was really good in anything) Campbell tries to shake off her Party of Five wholesome image by wearing dark eyeliner and swearing a lot she succeed Richards Starship Troopers is an astonishingly beautiful actress: got huge eerily placid blue eyes and her lips are permanently set in a bad-girl pout She makes for a ridiculously ripe high school student and she makes the best out of lines like you retarded or just brain dead from sniffing fumes out there in the just not sure an accomplishment to be proud of In supporting roles Theresa Russell and Robert Wagner embarrass themselves profoundly Only Bill Murray as By RENE RODRIGUEZ Herald Movie Critic In a perfect world all bad movies would be as outrageously entertaining as Wild Things a delirious wallow in sunbaked sleaze that revels in its own awfulness This has to be the trashiest Hollywood production since Showgirls although Wild Things nearly as explicit It does however find room for a steamy menage a trois a few interludes of lesbian hijinks a poolside cat-fightface-slapping match and Kevin Bacon flashing his manhood in the most unnecessary nude shot of the year For the Hooters crowd even a car wash sequence featuring two babes in wet T-shirts Wild Things is meant to be taken as a straightforward thriller but the movie never misses an opportunity to amp its con lot of the characters in Wild Things are big liars also greedy And kill you if they have to The movie was written by Stephen Peters whose previous credits include Death Wish 5 and it shows The screenplay is one long string of increasingly loopy plot twists and the best thing you can say about it is that the ending is perfectly impossible to predict (Those plot twists by the way keep on coming long after the words have flashed on the screen so make sure you stay for the closing credits) The cast members who have all been photographed to look their lusty best will no doubt go on to do better work Dillon reveals the limits of his range: not very convincing as the set-upon nice guy but he gets better later Bacon who also iV it i i the shyster lawyer hired to defend Lombardo comes through unscathed: His is the only dialogue that is meant to be funny and director John McNaughton has the good sense to let Murray improvise here and there Those little comic riffs suggest a healthy dose of self-awareness in Wild Things lip-smacking camp WILD THINGS (R) Cash Matt Dillon Kevin Bacon Neve Campbell Denise Richards Bill Murray Theresa Russell Robert Wagner Director: John McNaughton Producer: Rodney Liber Steven A Jones Screenwriter Stephen Peters A Columbia Pictures release Running time: 1 13 minutes Vulgar language nudity sexual situations violence adult themes -v' siderable camp factor a good thing because if it were any less prurient the film would be a chore to sit through Shot in South Florida last summer Wild Things is set in the fictional blueblood town of Blue Bay where high school guidance counselor Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon) has a reputation as a man After two of his students (Neve Campbell and Denise Richards) accuse him of rape Lombardo becomes the subject of a police investigation led by detective Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon) Wild distributor Columbia Pictures has made a special plea to the press not to reveal too much of the tricky plot (even though the trailers that have been playing in theaters for weeks reveal most of the big surprises in chronological order) Suffice to say that a ii i t' i mi ii I.