Wild Wild West Review
by Mr. Bryan Frankenseuss Theiss (franknseus AT aol DOT com)August 4th, 1999
WILD WILD WEST
A lot of people had it in for Wild Wild West the minute they saw the first trailer. They didn't like the western meets Jules Verne gimmickry. They assumed the horrible Will Smith-ization of the Stevie Wonder classic "I Wish" was representative of the film's score. And many white people had the ludicrous complaint that a black man can't play a government agent in the 1860s, even in a comedy-fantasy where his mission is to stop a legless supervillain in an 80-foot mechanical tarantula from assassinating President Grant.
I had high hopes, though. There are two types of people in this world: those who think giant steam powered robotic spiders are stupid, and those who don't. I am most certainly in the latter category, and proud of it. I have never quite accepted Will Smith as an actor, despite his pretty good performance in Six Degrees of Separation. His poor comic timing and self-conscious "I'm being funny right now" delivery has always bothered me in his comedies and action films. With the Wild Wild West trailer, I thought I might be seeing a new, more refined Will Smith, whose delivery matches his charisma.
But I was wrong. Will Smith continues his tradition of ruining any good lines he has. When he finds something that is funny (like his lines about a "white woman's boobies") he can't help but repeat it several times until you want to tell him, "Okay, I thought it was funny for a second there, but it's done now. Knock it off." And then he keeps going until you want to say, "What did I tell you? It's not funny anymore. God damn it, would you stop it?" Some lines are mildly amusing, but you still can't help but wish they were delivered by someone else. At one point, he confronts some evil henchmen aboard the robotic tarantula, and claims that he's there to deliver a telegram to the sinister Dr. Loveless from his mama. It's obviously meant to have a young Eddie Murphy con man type of feel to it, but Smith doesn't have the acting chops to sell a line like this. If it were Chris Tucker, you'd believe that West really wants these henchmen to believe his pathetic lie. With Smith you just think, "Oh, that would have been a pretty funny line in a better movie."
Smith's collaborator, director Barry Sonnenfeld, has not only not improved, but has gone downhill. One thing about Sonnenfeld is that he's never been as funny in his movies as he seems to be in real life. A Sonnenfeld interview is always a hilarious and entertaining freak show spectacular. Sonnenfeld either is, or wants us to believe that he is, a ridiculously neurotic lunatic terrorized by his status as a successful Hollywood director. On set, he is said to dress in the same style as his film's protagonists, defer creative decisions to his wife "Sweetie," and frequently start bawling when a scene doesn't work. On the set of Wild Wild West he allegedly collapsed in the grass and tearfully told Smith that his wife was dying of brain cancer. Later he realized that he was just feeling depressed because he was hungry. On Men In Black, he wore a tie that was too long and accidentally wiped his ass with it.
Another thing about Sonnenfeld is that his movies tend to seem funnier at the time. Upon release, The Addams Family seemed like a delightfully faithful in-the-flesh re-creation of Charles Addams' morbid cartoons. Now the novelty has worn off, it doesn't have enough jokes and it comes off rather dull. At the time, Addams Family Values seemed like a much funnier, more satirical take on the characters. Now it seems too broad and obvious. Sonnenfeld is not as imaginative or skillful as other cartoonish directors like Tim Burton, and he's not nearly as clever as his former collaborators the Coen Brothers (for whom he was a director of photography). But he's delivered some enjoyable trifles, Get Shorty was a good film, and he produced the definitive Elmore Leonard movie Out of Sight. I've always thought of him as one of the good guys. Not a genius, but with his heart in the right place.
With Wild Wild West, Sonnenfeld seems to be closer to the fake-eccentric commercial hack that some have made him out to be than the above-average goofball entertainer I like to think of him as. The former camera virtuoso has grown Michael-Bay-incoherent in his cinematic storytelling. I came out with a long list of story points I hadn't followed: How did the metal plate guy get electrocuted? Who was the dead guy hanging from the chain? How did they figure out that Artemus was not the real president? When did they save the scientist, Mr. Escobar? What did they plan to do with the flying machine before M. Emmett Walsh offered them explosives?
These things and others are unclear, while other story points are embarrassingly over-explained. We don't really need Artemus to point out that he got his attack strategy when he saw a bee kill a tarantula in the desert - we figured out the significance of that as soon as we saw it. When Jim West gets shot point blank and falls to the ground, we don't need to have a long stare at him laying as if dead, then slowly waking up, then slowly opening his jacket, then slowly discovering that the bullet has been stopped by Artemus' chain mail vest. Again, we knew this was going to happen as soon as we first spotted the invention.
Men In Black had a lot of enjoyable alien gimmickry - aliens inside dogs, aliens inside people's heads, tentacled alien babies whacking Will Smith real hard against the top of a car. In the end, it felt like too many of these gimmicks had been given away in the trailers, and if there had only been a little bit more, it would have worked a lot better. But Wild Wild West makes you yearn for the not-quite-full feel of Men In Black. There are a few great gimmicks - the tarantula, assassins hiding inside paintings, a projector hooked up to a severed head to reveal the last image it saw. But that's about it. Men In Black was also hurt by Smith's poorly delivered punchlines, which never quite worked for me. But the film was anchored by Tommy Lee Jones, who played the material straight like it obviously needed to be played. Here, no one plays it straight enough. Kevin Kline is introduced to us in a long, painfully unfunny scene in which he dresses as a woman and attracts many sleazy men by speaking in a Miss Piggy voice. Astonishingly, the filmmakers chose to repeat this routine in another, even more embarrassing scene with Smith wearing the fake tits.
Kenneth Branagh doesn't help anything with his over-the-top, hammy performance as the villain, Dr. Arliss Loveless. The best way to describe the character is to explain that at one point he yells, "Let the party begin!" You know the type, like Tommy Lee Jones or Jim Carrey in Batman Forever. The kind of villain who talks really loud, delighting in his own accent, but never inspiring fear or amusement. The type of villain you never want to invite to your multiplex again.
Salma Hayek is utterly wasted as Rita, a woman who comes along for the ride in order to… come along for the ride? This is an actress who has become a near legend just by dancing with a snake in one scene of a mildly-popular vampire flick. And somehow, they've made her the least memorable female lead in recent Hollywood history. I saw the movie yesterday and I can't even remember anything she did in it. In fact, the only characters I really liked much were Dr. Loveless' henchwomen, who are played by supermodels and have names like Munitia and Lipreada. They're the only characters who seem to be simplistic on purpose.
The media and newsgroup writers have been making a big deal about Wild Wild West's disappointing box office numbers. I hope the suits don't blame it on the subject matter, but instead see that even big summer movies need to be handled with some precision and some wit. For a while it seemed like audiences would bend over for any well marketed piece of shit, with the standards getting lower all the time. Witness the astounding success of Batman Forever, Independence Day and Armageddon. I know things will never turn the way I want them to, where disposable, pre-fabricated blockbusters are given the cold shoulder and more imaginative movies like, say, Babe: Pig in the City and Rushmore are seen and enjoyed by millions. Still, when mainstream audiences share my disgust with a Godzilla or a Wild Wild West, it makes the world feel a little happier, a little more unified.
--Bryan Frankenseuss Theiss
"I write rhymes so fresh I try to bite my own verses." --Tash
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.
