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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