Wild Wild West Review
by Frankie Paiva (swpstke AT aol DOT com)July 22nd, 1999
Wild Wild West (PG-13) * 1/2
Starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
A Review by Frankie Paiva
Imagine putting both Addams family movies together, adding a heap of sexual innuendo, and placing the effects of Men in Black on top of it. Now imagine taking the dry wit out of all these movies, adding an extreme amount of violence, ethnical slurs, and push-up bras.
Wild Wild West, a new creation of Barry Sonnenfeld, director of Get Shorty and Men in Black tries to make it work...it doesn't. Exactly whose fault it is is yet to be determined, so let me just give you an outline.
James West (Smith, who still fits the superhero role nicely, but he's horribly miscast) is teamed up with effects specialist Artemus Gordon (Kline, who puts on that fancy-pants know-it-all thing that worked in In & Out, but not here) to save president Grant from an 80-foot tarantula created by Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh, who, I'm ashamed to say, should stick with Helena Bonham Carter and Shakespeare) he's using to take over the entire US government turning the Northwest into Loveliss Land.
Now this could be an original premise, but the film is so darned contrived that you know Will Smith will win in the end. Whereas, Arlington Road (a better action/paranoia thriller by about, oh, ** or *** stars) had a suprising explosive ending that you couldn't see coming until the very end, this one's obvious at about the 30-minute point.
I believe that the filmmakers realized this, so they decided to make the film more fun by adding cool gadgets, heaps of jokes about breasts, tons of violence (an extreme amount for a PG-13 movie) and racial and ethnic slurs that sound like their coming from episodes of Jerry Springer and American History X.
This film is not for children and parents should be very cautious about taking them to it. I actually believe that a child would benefit much more from seeing South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, Arlington Road, or maybe even American Pie. Thus, I give Wild Wild West (the worst movie of the year so far along with Virus) * 1/2 stars.
A Review by Frankie Paiva
The 12 Year-Old Movie Reviewer
E-Mail me at [email protected]
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.
