Very Bad Things

(PolyGram)

The really bad thing about Chicago Hope actor Peter Berg's debut feature isn't the clueless male characters' boozing, whoring, coke snorting, and serial killing -- it's pert and driven Laura (Cameron Diaz, minus hair gel and sunny disposition), the bride-to-be of colorless stockbroker Kyle (Jon Favreau). She provides Kyle with abundant reason to seek the temporary escape of a bachelor party in Las Vegas with his buddies: naturally they get stoked on booze, drugs, rock and roll, and the inevitable stripper who, just as inevitably, dies on them. Berg clearly delights in shaking off network restrictions, but his imagination and his moral insight seem confined to the platitudes of the tube.