Wild Things: Critic Reviews

Lucky John McNaughton. Best known for the harder-edged Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Mad Dog and Glory," he hits the 90210 jackpot with a slick, steamy tale of nonstop treachery...

The movie is as tawdry as someone else's lingerie, yet not without a certain prurient watchability.

The expression 'cheap thrills' fits this movie perfectly. That's the only reason to see it. But if you're in the mood, that can be a pretty good reason.

It is my dreary duty to report that Wild Things ... lacks fantasy and flamboyance, that it lacks, precisely, wild things, and that most of it is just flat.

It's like a three-way collision between a softcore sex film, a soap opera and a B-grade noir. I liked it.

What I'm supposed to find 'satisfying' is predicated on the idea that almost everyone in the world is trash.

Director John McNaughton has some sly fun with the noir genre in this sex-drenched tale of two young vixens (Neve Campbell and Denise Richards) who accuse their high school guidance counselor (Matt Dillon) of rape and begin unwinding plots within plots.

Sly, torrid and original, pic is certain to shake up an otherwise complacent marketplace.

Call it gratuitous annoyance.

Sure it's an exploitation movie, but this twisted Technicolor orgy is also a thriller in the original sense of that word.

I've seen more convincing drama (with nearly as much bare flesh) on that pinnacle of narrative quality, Baywatch.

[It's got] Neve Campbell and Denise Richards making out, all the plot twists and double-crossing of a James Ellroy novel, Neve Campbell and Denise Richards having a catfight in a swimming pool and Bill Murray as a sleazy neck-brace-wearing lawyer.

On its own terms, it works; that is, each ending is well thought-out and vaguely logical.

Convoluted erotic thriller, not for kids.

A sleazy, seamy, flashy, steamy, vulgar exploitation thriller that revels in every minute of its own trashiness and delivers some pretty solid -- if prurient -- entertainment.

I heartily recommend Wild Things for its fits of teasing and eroticism (rare in American cinema) and for Bill Murray who has a great role as Lombardo's attorney.

This is one of those puzzle movies that's quite intriguing while it's feigning superficiality -- and truly funny when Bill Murray is around -- but really dumb once it thinks it's being smart.

Wild Things plays like a long Twilight Zone episode with a thick Everglades breeze to it. READ ON (DVD)->

One of those films for which the phrase 'guilty pleasure' was invented.

Aging sexpot Theresa Russell gets the most Skinemax-worthy moment in a picture that purports to humour jailbait fiends

Good, trashy fun, with gratuitous sex and nudity, a ludicrous (in a so-bad-it's-funny way) performance by Denise Richards, and an implausible noir plot that keeps you in the dark until the final credits. The ultimate guilty pleasure.

One of those thankfully rare pictures that makes every man and woman it portrays seem hollow and insubstantial.

What "Titanic" supplied for female teens, "Wild Things" will supply for their male counterparts.

...even though the action is spiced up with kinky sex, a quick flash of male frontal nudity and long, lingering shots of voluptuous girls in skimpy clothes, there's a peculiar lifelessness about the whole affair.

Personally, even though I think that the film's too twisted to be believable, I enjoyed it.