by Curtis Edmonds -- blueduck@hsbr.org
Before I say anything negative about Wild Wild West, I want to take a moment and remind you that Kevin Kline can act.
Remember the scene in A Fish Called Wanda where Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Otto (Kline) are preparing to double-cross their partners and nab the look from the safe where it's hidden? Otto cracks the safe open and... surprise... it's empty. Kline stands up, empties his pistol into the safe, and screams: "I'M DISAPPOINTED!!!"
Well, Wild Wild West has Kevin Kline. And Mr. Summer Movie himself, Will Smith. And Kenneth Branagh, the greatest Shakespearian actor of our time. And the babelicious Salma Hayek. And Ted Levine from The Silence of the Lambs. And It's directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed Get Shorty, and was the cinematographer for Miller's Crossing, one of the best movies ever.
And it's a terrible, terrible movie.
Wild Wild West is as bad as a movie can be without actually having Richard Gere in it. It's an action movie with no action to speak of, a comedy movie with no laughs, a buddy cop movie with no chemistry between the leads. The only person who comes out of this debacle with anything close to honor or dignity is George Clooney's agent, who saved his client from an embarrassing debacle. A Newsweek critic called Wild Wild West this year's Hudson Hawk, which is an insult to Hudson Hawk. (Hudson Hawk at least had Sandra Bernhard screeching maniacally and Danny Aiello and Bruce Willis singing show tunes -- there's nothing even that diverting in Wild Wild West.)
This is the part of the review where you're supposed to recapitulate the plot, but I can't. It's too painful. Instead, what follows are a few brief observations:
1. Never, ever, EVER again make another movie from a Sixties TV series. The Avengers should have served as a warning to everyone in Hollywood: don't ever do this again. Please, please, please, stay away from Hogan's Heroes and The Prisoner and, er, I don't know, Gomer Pyle. Placing the successes of movies like The Fugitive and Wayne's World aside, maybe a Congressional ban on recycling TV shows might be worth looking into. (Consider that Twin Peaks, the best show of the 1980's, was made into an indescribably wretched movie.)
2. Wild Wild West has a lot of special effects, but it comes at a time when we're becoming more blase about special effects. Remember how neat it was in Forrest Gump when the filmmakers used computer graphics to make Gary Sinise look as if he had no legs? Branagh's character also has no legs, and they use the same tricks, but it's not nearly as cool now.
3. In a summer chock-full of tasteless movies, the offensive attempts at humor in Wild Wild West really stand out. Charles Krauthammer did an excellent piece in the Washington Post about how the portrayal of Branagh's character (who uses a steam-powered wheelchair) is insensitive to people with disabilities. The racial jokes aimed at the Will Smith character are just as bad. I don't have any problem with casting Will Smith in the Jim West role -- he does a pretty good job, given what he had to work with -- but the smart move would have been to ignore his race in the screenplay. Instead, we get things like lynching jokes that are so far from being funny that you'd have to stand in line for a passport to get there.
5. Salma Hayek is given nothing to do in this movie but stand around and look pretty. This might have been OK if she had gotten a fair amount of screen time, but she doesn't even get that.
6. Kevin Kline imitates the President at one point in the movie, which he did in Dave. (Dave is a lot better movie.) I think Robert Conrad was rumored to want the President Grant part, but a kind fate intervened and saved him from embarrassment.
7. The black-white buddy-cop thing has officially been done to death now. So has the bit about the villain falling to his death from a high place. Wild Wild West doesn't have a car chase, thankfully, but it has a train chase that's not all that interesting. (One could wish that the filmmakers had seen Narrow Margin for hints on how to do a train chase, or even the Under Siege sequel... and yes, it says something about the quality of Wild WIld West when I can compare it unfavorably to a Steven Seagal movie.)
8. Another note about the casting: One can't help but wonder if the movie could have been better if Kevin Kline were the villain and Kenneth Branagh were the Artemus Gordon character. Kline makes no impression whatsoever as Artemus Gordon: he's shallow, fussy, vain and condescending. And Branagh just mucks the supervillain thing up awfully, really, it's pathetic for an actor of his skills. Kline would be a much better choice for the villain: he'd bring a certain class to the role that's completely missing from Branagh's performance. And Branagh could do the Artemus Gordon part in his sleep.
9. Even if the casting switch wouldn't have worked, it certainly couldn't have made things worse. There's no way of making things worse in the Wild WIld West short of bringing in a giant army of Ewoks to trip over the giant metal tarantula or something godawful like that.
I could go on, of course, but slinging invective makes my arm tired. Don't go see the Wild Wild West, but if you do, don't be surprised if you hear people walking out of the theater yelling, "I'M DISAPPOINTED!!!" Don't be surprised if you're one of them, either.
-- Curtis D. Edmonds blueduck@hsbr.org
"First, you show up. Then you see what happens."
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
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