Wild Things

Comment:
If you've seen the trailers of Wild Things you probably think it's a sort of vulgar soft-porn movie whose main features are the half-naked actresses and the hot sex scenes. Instead, there is hardly any nudity of the main characters with the notable exception of Kevin Bacon who sports an unexpected full frontal nudity... probably the director wanted to please the audience of both genders...

The story itself is strictly related to sex affairs. In fact, everything is based around a guidance counselor, played by Matt Dillon, being accused of rape by one of his student, played by Denise Richards. The initial police investigations, the trial and the further investigations headed by the detective played by Kevin Bacon, slowly uncovers strange relationships between the characters. The second half of the story is just a continuous sequence of plot twists that make everything more complicate and give a completely different view of every character.

At the beginning the rhythm is quite slow and the story seems quite boring, probably because there is nothing particularly interesting. The characters seems either plain or even irritating and unpleasant, especially Denise Richards who seemed to fake a charming attitude although I still couldn't forget her disagreeable character in last year Starship Troopers! As the movie proceeds, the only interesting character is the attorney played by Bill Murray who features a few comic moments that give some relief to the otherwise heavy atmosphere.

The story starts becoming interesting during the trial and reaches the best moments when some of the inner plots are revealed. This is actually the only part that really saves the movie and makes it intriguing and finally catches the attention of the audience after the initial dullness and before the exaggerated finale. In fact, as soon as the end is becoming nearer, the plot degenerates in a series of twists and double-crosses that are quite predictable or at least expected. Moreover, near the very end I had the negative feeling that the movie was never going to finish since yet another twist seemed to be likely to happen, and then another one, and so on! Indeed, my feeling was quite right since there are some extra scenes even during the closing credits that explain some minor parts of the plot and finally give a definitive ending.

After all, this seems to be a low-budget and low-brain movie that hopes to catches more audience thanks to the misleading trailers (but you may guess that it won't be a 'mature' audience!). Fortunately the movie is not so bad overall and the excesses are not in the scandalous scenes (which are not shocking at all) but in the plot (which is somewhat outrageous in the end).
A final negative note is, once again, for the italian title. A mixed english italian title such as "Sex Crimes - Giochi Pericolosi" looks quite silly given the original title has been completely omitted ("giochi pericolosi" translates to "dangerous games")...