The Michigan Review

Wild Things: Wildly Unreal

by Matthew Buckley

It seems that Florida specifically, the fictional city of Blue Bay in Wild Things has a far superior public school system than my home state of Iowa (specifically, Des Moines). They have auditoriums with comfy padded chairs, where police officers come to hold discussions of sex crimes and how to prevent them. They have sailing teams with a fleet of sparkling school­owned sailboats. They have a wealthy elite that generously sprinkles the school with money. In Des Moines, and for most of the real world ... you get the picture.

Most importantly, everyone is attractive in Blue Bay. Start with Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards), who is the spoiled­brat daughter of Blue Bay's richest divorced couple. Wet, dry, or on the floor, her clothes are top dollar fashion. Wet, dry, or on the floor, she isn't half­bad herself. She hangs out with the rich set who, of course, are all appropriately attractive and well­dressed.

Rich young women looking good, I concede, is not exclusive to Blue Bay ... Des Moines has a few of them as well. But how many school disctricts have attractive guidance counselors, like Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon)? How many have sex crimes police patrols led by Detective Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon)? I don't know about you, but our Des Moines girls from the wrong side of the tracks may be able to fix cars, but they definitely look like they are from the wrong side of the tracks. In Suzie Toller, you get all the mechanic's skills in the body of Neve Campbell. The people of Blue Bay, you understand, live in a far more attractive place than you or I.

Yet not all is sunny in Blue Bay. The aforementioned Lombardo makes the mistake of getting left alone with Kelly. Running from his house, Kelly eventually cries rape. As you might suspect, this is anathema to guidance counselors. It gets worse when Suzie corroborates Kelly's story with a sordid Lombardo rape tale of her own.

This might sound like the premise of an entirely promising movie, but in fact this covers about the first twenty­five minutes. When Lombardo hires attorney Ken Bowden (Bill Murray) to defend him, after a devastating cross­examination, Lombardo receives eight million dollars. Now we have eight million dollars, plenty of attractive people with manipulative minds, and an hour­and­a­half to go. The relatively familiar premise question is, then, who will screw whom? With Denise Richards and Neve Campbell on the scene, the question has duel meanings.

It is the nature of this kind of movie that you can't reveal too much, so I won't. Suffice it to say it is supremely unrealistic, with what seem to be gaping plot holes covered up with a line or two later in the movie. Essentially, you better not use the bathroom. Screenwriters Ken Nunn and Stephen Peters have put together a convoluted, engaging screenplay which won't win any Oscars but sustains audience interest.

Director John McNaughton does a neat trick at the end by slipping in additional movie scenes into the ending credits. The idea, I guess, is that if you had seen these clips during the actual movie, then everything would have become clear. I think there has to be a limit to this, since Wild Things is the sort of movie where anything you see instantly gets questioned. I suspect that if we actually saw the clips from the credits in the movie itself, it wouldn't really explain much at all. Nunn and Peters could certainly have taken any of those extra scenes, slipped them into the movie, and worked around them.

McNaughton actually does a pretty effective job throughout the whole movie. This sort of "twisteroo" movie, where everyone is suspect and the resolution isn't worked out until the absolute final minute, can rapidly become a farce if the director and actors aren't careful. For the most part, McNaughton handles this pretty well. He relies too much on random shots of gators and swamps to remind us we are in Florida, a ploy which grates on the nerves after a while ... does he really think that shots of gators rising from the swamps are necessary to establish mood in this film? The actors also do a decent job; almost all the major players have to play good and/or bad at the drop of a dime. In the "kid nympho" role, Richards does a nice job. It's probably high time for Campbell to take some serious movie roles she handles these flashy thriller roles well and could probably raise her act a notch or two. Dillon and Bacon are both solid. This movie is not going to win any Academy awards, or even nominations, or even ballpark consideration for nominations. However, it is a playful, engaging little flick worthy of $7.50 and a couple of hours. MR

This article was published in the 22 April 1998 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 16, Number 10).
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