Wild Wild West Review
by Stephen Sills (sills AT pipeline DOT com)July 6th, 1999
Wild Wild West
A review by Stephen Sills
Rated PG-13 (violence, sexual themes, brief nudity, mild profanity)
I am continually amazed at movies like this. That some producer would
waste an abundance of talent and money on a script as abysmal as this
one is mind-boggeling, but it seems to happen a lot nowadays. "Wild
Wild West" is a beautifully filmed, well acted, and well directed
piece of garbage; and its insipid screenplay is completely at fault.
In short, this movie is a comedy without laughs. So many jokes fall
flat that it borderlines surreal. The high production values keep it
from being a total fiasco, but it's still pretty boring.
Will Smith stars as Jim West, an old western, R&B variation of the
James Bond character. West is teamed up with Artemus Gordon (Kevin
Kline), and they're pretty much polar oppisites: West prefers to solve
his problems with an array of bullets, Gordon traditionally favors a
more pacifistic approach. Talk about deeply developed characters. At
any rate, this leads to the inevitable conflicts between
methodologies, none of which are funny.
The year is 1869. Several top scientists have been abducted, and the
suspected culprit is a disgruntled former Confederate General,
Bloodbath McGrath (Ted Levine). President Grant sends West and Gordon
to investigate.
There's evidence that McGrath is attending some sort of Confederate
reunion in Louisiana. West and Gordon show up and learn that McGrath
is actually working for Dr. Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh), another
disgruntled former Confederate. As it turns out, Loveless plans to
use the combined knowledge of the scientests to create the ultimate
super weapon, which he will use to conquer the United States.
I'd go further with the plot, but there isn't any point. This film's
narrative is little more than a jumbled, unfunny mess. I only laughed
at a couple of jokes, and then only lightly. There isn't one truly
uprorously funny moment in this film, and that's pretty disasterous
when you consider that it's primarily a comedy.
As I said, the fault is totally that of the script. When you consider
their respective roles, Will Smith and Kevil Kline do as good as they
could have possibly done. The leads could've been played Samuel L.
Jackson and Robert De Niro and the film still would've been awful. No
one, and I mean no one, can make a line like "Bye bye, Mr. Knife Guy!"
sound good.
Still, this film has a lot going for it visually. The set design is
fantastic, maybe even Oscar worthy. The cinematogrophy by Michael
Ballhaus (who was also behind camera in Martin Scorsese's brilliant
"Goodfellas") , is absolutely stunning. He lends the film a much
needed exciting, comic bookish look. I won't fault Barry Sonnenfeld
either. He does a fine job of directing the proceedings, but, like
the rest of the people involved with the film, there really isn't
anything that he can do to correct its one major flaw. Despite being
beautifully made, "Wild Wild West" becomes quite boring after the
half-way point. The appeal of the visuals ends long before the film
does.
If "Wild Wild West" didn't look so good, it would be almost
insufferable. As it is, it's somewhat tolerable, but not very
entertaining. It hurts to give such a well made movie a score this
low, but there isn't anything much worse than an unfunny comedy.
*1/2 out of ****
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If you want to read more of my reviews, visit my wet site at
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Derby/3217. I'm just getting the
site up so there are only a few reviews as of this writing, but I'm
trying to update it as frequently as possible.
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
