The “reprehensible” movie Roger Ebert hated with a passion: “I left feeling sad and angry”
Everyone has seen at least a handful of bad movies in the cinema, but leaving with a bad taste in your mouth and a pissed-off attitude is altogether worse. Roger Ebert watched a lot more than the average cinephile, and one questionable experience left him running the gamut of unwanted emotions.
Of course, movies are supposed to generate an emotional response in the audience. Whether it’s excitement, elation, sadness, joy, exhilaration, misery, or fear, the best films know how to worm their way into the viewer’s heart and mind. The downside is that wretched pictures have the same effect, except it’s not intentional.
These days, most people know Peter Berg as the guy who hasn’t made a movie that doesn’t star Mark Wahlberg since 2012. The actor-turned-filmmaker has become increasingly synonymous with mid-budget action flicks, but the less said about his more expensive efforts, Hancock and Battleship, the better.
His feature debut came in 1998 when he helmed the black comedy Very Bad Things, which packed a solid cast that boasted Cameron Diaz, Christian Slater, Jon Favreau, and Jeremy Piven among its number. The plot follows a group of characters who resort to increasingly desperate measures to cover up an accidental murder, and Ebert couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Peter Berg’s Very Bad Things isn’t a bad movie, just a reprehensible one,” he wrote in a one-star review. “It presents as comedy things that are not amusing. If you think this movie is funny, that tells me things about you I don’t want to know.” That made it clear from the start that he didn’t just hate the film, but had serious questions for anyone who enjoyed it.
He was also a glutton for punishment, apparently, because he saw it twice. “What bothers me most, after two viewings, is its confidence that an audience would be entertained by its sad, sick vision,” Ebert continued. “Its cynicism is the most unattractive thing about it; the assumption that an audience has no moral limits and will laugh at cruelty simply to feel hip.”
The critic had a particular distaste for Very Bad Things‘ reliance on sexist, misogynistic, and racist humour, and even though he made a point of noting that “the movie is not blatantly racist,” it became enough of a recurring theme that he felt compelled to question why the writer and director made it such a frequent touchstone for his dialogue, character motivations, and scenes.
Continuing to kick a man while he was down, Ebert acknowledged that “Berg shows that he can direct a good movie, even if he hasn’t.” The overriding sentiment was misery, with the credits rolling finally bringing a small mercy to an otherwise regrettable trip to the multiplex.
Ebert “left the theatre feeling sad and angry” at what he’d just dedicated 100 minutes of his life to, which begs the question about why he’d seen it twice. Did he miss something the first time around? Did he want to double-check that it was as bad as he first thought? Sadly, those questions remain unanswered, but his opinion on Very Bad Things does not.
