It would be tempting to dismiss this pic as just another Gen-X black comedy. And, many of the major critics did just that.

Kyle Fisher (Jon Favreau) is set to marry Laura Garrety (Cameron Diaz), and is looking forward to a gala bachelor party in Las Vegas, orchestrated by his best man Robert Boyd (Christian Slater). Along for the fun are brothers Adam Berkow (Daniel Stern) and Michael Berkow (Jeremy Piven). Rounding out the group is near-mute Charles Moore (Leland Orser).

As the booze and drugs flow in the Vegas hotel suite, a stripper (Carla Scott) arrives to really liven things up. And liven up they do--until she impales her head on a hook in the bathroom, while she and Michael engage in some wild mufky-fufky.

Panic begins to set in, but then Boyd takes charge. The guys agree to sneak her body out of the hotel, and bury it in the desert. This simple plan gets more complicated when a security guard (Russell B. McKenzie) appears, and they have to kill him too.

Nevertheless, they get it done, with considerable blood and guts.

Back in LA, they try to stay cool, but uptight Adam cracks first, with the body count growing all the time. By movie's end, let's just say that everyone pays, including Laura, whose maniacal insistence on her wedding plans being unaffected really backfires.

First time director Peter Berg indulges his actors a bit too much, and there's an excess of crammed-in faux moralizing after nearly every bad action. But this is minor carping. It's amazing that Very Bad Things got made, with all the name talent, knowing that there is hardly a huge market for this sort of entertainment.

So what do we have?

In Deliverance (1972), the group lies about their friend's death to cover up the murder of their attackers. As in Very Bad Things, the men rise to the occasion, but unlike VBT's protagonists, they are much more sympathetic characters. After all, they killed in self defense.

In VBT, you end up hating everyone, possibly feeling a bit sorry for Kyle and Moore.

Still, serious issues come to the fore:

What would YOU do if an accidental death took place in a drug and booze filled hotel room--especially if only one man in the group was involved with the tragedy? How easy to bury the problem in the desert!

Laura was an over-the-top female caricature, but what about Adam's wife, Lois (Jeanne Tripplehorn)? Don't we all know bitchy, self-indulgent soccer moms? How painfully real it was when widow Lois confronts the group with Adam's cryptic confession. They try to stonewall, and she isn't buying it. Kyle, knowing women all too well, finally "admits" that the secret of the Vegas trip was that Adam had sex with a prostitute. That Lois was close to knowing the real story of the two deaths, but became far more upset with the relatively minor adultery issue, strikes a bit too close to home.

Surely, this pic was unpleasant, but, like Deliverance, it forces us to look inward. How would we have reacted? Could we have kept permanent silence? And, toughest of all--with the first death taking place in a separate room, with no participation by anyone expect Michael, why SHOULD the others notify the authorities in what would be at best an extremely difficult matter? Where does the virtue of prudence intersect with the virtue of honesty?

Big questions from a little film.