The Winner Of '99s Flop Of The Year Award... (Wild Wild West (DVD))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Wild Wild West (DVD)
Date:	06/01/02 (67 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: soundtrack is ok, unintentioanl laughs aplenty, ...if you can stay awake

Disadvantages: HYPE!!!, basically it all sucks

The Flintstones...The Avengers...The Fugitive...Maverick...The Brady Bunch...Sgt. Bilko...Lost In Space...Charlies Angels...

...and so on, the list of Hollywood movies which have been made based upon old television shows, especially from the 50's and 60's is an ever growing, and seemingly never-ending one. There is a bandwagon here to be jumped upon and its seems that every Tom, Dick, or Spielberg is willing to jump upon it in the puruit of a fast buck acheived by playing on people's nostalgia. Wild, Wild, West may not bring too many thoughts immediately to mind, but its based upon the 60's US television show which ran for 5 years and was rather popular until it was pulled from the screens in an attempt to reduce the amount of violence shown rather than to boost ratings. It did however produce two spin-offs movies in the late 70s starring the same actors allegedly but apparently they're not worth investigating. So then...given a whopping great budget, some of the hottest names in Hollywood and advanced special effects what does a 90s director bring to modern day audiences?...

...naturally, he brings us a pig's ear. The first sign of trouble ought to have been the number of screenwriters involved with the whole thing, which is always a bad sign. Too many cooks spoil the broth, too many screenwriters confused the bejesus out of cinema watchers and this is no exception. Wild Wild West is confusing because there really is no aim and no direction in the whole damn 100 minute running time, instead you get a whole heap of occasionally flashy special effects, usually mundane ones and horrific overacting aplenty hung on a hilariously bad script and a plot which goes literally nowhere. Basically, what you get is the 3 minute trailer stretched out over the entire running length. It was panned by virtually every critic across the board when it was released and in my view having watched it yesterday, quite rightly so because it stinks...
well, ok, its a little smelly then, undoubtably you'll have seen worse.

Will Smith plays the lead character in a movie which plays like a science fiction cowboy movie. Its an odd mixture, but not an original one and for anyone who has seen West World, or Back To The Future Part 3(?)one which can actually work rather well. Smith is Jim West and Kevin Kline his partner Artemus Gordon, both of whom are federal agents in post Civil War America trying to discover who is kidnapping all the country's scientists. Well, it turns out to be Kenneth Brannagh's dastardly wheelchair-bound villain Arliss Loveless who wants to overthrow the Union government and sell the land back to the British, French etc! Loveless was a confederate soldier who lost his legs during that war, and now bitter and twisted he wants to avenge his situation - but will he succeed???? Stupid question really. Along for the ride comes the obligatory love interest Rita Escobar played by Salma Hayek who claims to be one of the daughters of a kidnapped scientist and who both leading good guys immediately fall in love with and a whole bunch of special effects which were obviously the main reason for watching...

Apparently the original show The Wild Wild West(the movie dropped the 'the' part) was camp, but charming and entertaining with lots of action guaranteed. The remake tries quite hard to appear camp but instead comes across as naff, doesn't have much action and what there is feels lacking in any real 'life' and is about as charming as a...well it ain't charming. Its easy to riddicule this movie, so I'll save your time and mine and stick to a few points:

~The Acting~

Will Smith always plays none other than Will Smith in every single movie he makes which isn't necessarily a bad thing because he is quite a likable guy. Unfortunately, he is horribly miscast as Jim West and rather than coming across as cool and suave as the intention
seems to be, he is instead cold, stiff and hideously boring. He rarely has an even remotely humourous line and the delivery falls flat, as do virtually all the gags here to be fair. Kevin Kline doesn't fair much better and rather than their being the friendly cameraderie which the originhal series apparently saw between these two there is instead a complete lack of chemistry between them. No friendly banter, enjoyment of their screentime etc. just a flat delivery of lines and actions. Ugh! Salma Hayek is totally wasted here too as the token love-interest/damsel in distress role which is a criminal waste of an actress of her talents. Worst of all though, or best, because it offers so many unintentioanl laughs, is Kenneth Branagh's bad guy. If there was an annual award for horrendous overacting then Branagh would win hands down(probably every year too!), but then the whole set up gives him carte blanche to do this. You can tell he's the bad guy by the way they've chiselled his beard and shoved him in dark clothes all the time...the rest is upto Branagh to overplay and overplay he does...laughably so. You also have to question his American accent which is at best erm 'iffy'.

~Script 'n' stuff~

Its awful. I wish I could remember some of the really bad lines but I can't, suffice to say that some of the lines had me busting up when they patently weren't meant to. Its unfortunate that the lines which ARE meantto be funny fall so dead that one is reminded of the part in Vic and Bob's Shooting Stars where Vic tells a gag and nothing but deathly silence follows, the tumbleweed rolls past and a bell tolls somewhere...I could hear the bell tolling. Rarely does a gag work, and the in jokes which litter the movie are rather obscure to say the least so most aren't going to pick up on them. Kevin Kline for instance play the president and the role of federal officer which is all very nudgey-winky towards a similar du
al role he played in Dave, or the name of Kline favourite director appearing on a billboard! Yes, we're all going to spot those ones and kids, who this movie was surely aimed at mostly(???) aren't going to spot them at all! With 4 people working on the screenplay you'd think the script could have been a little better...

Special Effects

Special effects are probably what drew people to come see this in the first place when it hit the cinemas a couple of years ago. The trailer made them look rather awesome, with a huge spider-like robot rather reminscent of those things in Star Wars(ok I forget the names, I'm not a huge fan of Star Wars) being the most memorable image from them. Its unfortunate then that the effects you see on the trailer pretty much are the decent effects seen throughout the entire movie and the rest simply relies upon linking a bunch of contrived and implausible situations together to lead a jerky shaky path to its closure. The special effects which are here are good, but surely no more than one has come to expect from a Hollywood movie with a tasty budget??? Special effects alone do not make a good movie, this is a good example of why not.


Overall

Wild Wild West is not going to be the worst movie you have ever seen in your life despite what the critics at the time may have lead you to believe. Its also not going to be something you should even dream of going out of your way to see but if someone offers to lend you the video or it makes a television appearance then its worth checking out...if only to laugh at Branagh's dreadfully over the top performance!

Summary: