WILD THINGS (52)

Directed by: John McNaughton

Starring: Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, Kevin Bacon, Bill Murray

The Pitch: In an affluent Florida community, a high-school girl accuses a popular teacher of rape ; but things are Not What They Seem.

Theo Sez: Lessee now...a cat-fight, a three-way sex scene, girl-on-girl smooching, frontal male nudity, nubile young things in wet T-shirts - and still not a hint of any real edge, or anything sleazier than simulated raunchiness for the benefit of hype-ridden articles in glossy entertainment mags (which admittedly is pretty sleazy, when you think about it). The twisty plot and teenage characters are presumably SCREAM-influenced but the games-playing feels perfunctory and not even terribly clever, down to the final familiar twist of the (relatively) nice character trumping all the nasty ones - and is it worth noting that the entire second half makes no sense at all in narrative-logic terms (Dillon and Co. gain nothing by conspiring with Bacon's character - he doesn't help them get the money, merely adds complications)? Needless to say, making sense isn't the point here - nor, despite the director, do the barbed references to class distinctions finally amount to much ; the point is "having fun", not taking seriously its amusing, rather limited bag of tricks and delighting in peripheral pleasures like Murray's scene-stealing turn as a shady lawyer (consoling an incarcerated client with a cheerfully bland "You know, this is really a good news / bad news situation"). He probably thought he was in a better film than this hollow exercise studded with nuggets of gratuitous naughtiness ; bonus points for the what-really-happened inserts in the end credits, though.