Wild Wild West (1999)
reviewed by
Scott Renshaw
WILD WILD WEST
(Warner Bros.)
Starring: Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Salma Hayek, Ted
Levine.
Screenplay: S. S. Wilson & Brent Maddock and Jeffrey Price & Peter S.
Seaman.
Producers: Jon Peters and Barry Sonnenfeld.
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (adult themes, violence, adult humor, profanity)
Running Time: 105 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
There are three ways you can go when you adapt a television series
for film. You can poke fun, which worked well with the BRADY BUNCH films.
You can play it straight, which worked well with THE UNTOUCHABLES. Or you
can pump it up with cinematic steroids, which has crashed and burned THE
AVENGERS, THE MOD SQUAD, LOST IN SPACE, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, etc. In
their zeal to dust off beloved small screen properties for the big
screen, producers often have ignored everything that made those properties
beloved in the first place. The nostalgia card only plays so far, after
all -- if you want to bring in the kids, you've got to blow more stuff up.
There was every reason to suspect that WILD WILD WEST would be the
latest T.V. charmer-turned-blockbuster monstrosity. Producer Jon Peters
was renowned for embracing the "too much isn't nearly enough" ethos, and
word of disastrous test screenings had been leaking out of Hollywood for a
few months. As it turns out, WILD WILD WEST is only part monstrosity and
part faithful re-creation, with neither approach working nearly as well as
it should.
The principals are once again James West (Will Smith) and Artemus
Gordon (Kevin Kline), Federal agents circa 1869. West, an Army
investigator, is a man of action; U. S. Marshal Gordon is an intellectual
inventor and master of disguise. The two clashing personalities are
teamed up at the insistence of President Grant (also played by Kline) to
find out who is kidnapping scientists and threatening to overthrow the
government. The trail leads to Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh), an
embittered former Confederate scientist determined to take out on the
United States the loss of the lower half of his body in an experiment gone
awry.
There are at least a few hints that director Barry Sonnenfeld is
interested in evoking tongue-in-cheek spirit of the series. The main
title sequence includes the familiar tinted freeze-frames, the
protagonists still travel in their private train the Wanderer, and the
grand plans of the maniacal villain are appropriately maniacal. The film
also hooks in to the series' anachronistic satire of James Bond-like
secret agent hijinks, which turns into a surprising problem. In 1965, it
was fresh to watch Artemus play fussy Q to West's brawling Bond, fresh to
watch an adventure self-aware of adventure genre conventions. In 1999,
hip referentiality just isn't hip any more, especially when it comes to
manly action heroes and their toys. When Will Smith's character
introduces himself as "West...James West," it should play as a winking
homage. Instead, it just feels tired.
When WILD WILD WEST doesn't work as a straight return to the gimmicks
and goofs of the series, there's always the bombastic special effects
route. Gadgetry and megalomania were common elements of the series, but
a computer-rendered 80-foot-tall mechanized tarantula-tank doesn't have
quite the same low-tech appeal. The overkill isn't even restricted to the
special effects, with Salma Hayek's va-va-voom appeal wasted for no other
reason than a little bare flesh. And when the script is in need of an
easy joke, there's always Smith knowingly fending off Southern racism.
Branagh seems to understand the theatrical hamminess required for
Loveless, pitching the character as cartoonish as he can be. His
cartoonish henchmen and henchwomen, on the other hand, are a waste of time
and fight choreography.
WILD WILD WEST is so frantic that it spends too little time on its
strongest asset, the interplay between Smith and Kline. Both actors have
fine comic timing, and both play up the rivalry between the gunslinger and
the deep thinker. There are more enjoyable comic moments in WILD WILD
WEST than I was expecting, thanks to Sonnenfeld's sometimes surreal comic
touch (references to E. T. and the RCA Victor dog). He just bounces back
and forth too often between approaches to the material. It's uneven as
throwback entertainment, and it's uneven as contemporary action film -- a
wild wild mess of a movie that shows the danger of playing around with
previously successful material, no matter how you try to play it.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 whirled series: 5.
Visit Scott Renshaw's Screening Room
http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/
***
Subscribe to receive new reviews directly by email!
See the Screening Room for details, or reply to this message with subject
"Subscribe".
Have I seen this movie: Yes
And what did I think: After hearing a number of bad reviews for
this movie during the summer, I decided to wait for this to come
on video before I watched it. I'm glad I did, because Wild Wild
West is just pure fluff. No story, no good acting, not much
action and only a few special effects are all this movie has.
Will Smith gives a drab performance, nowhere near what he gave
Men In Black. Smith's costars give anything but a good
performance. Particulary is Saylma Hayek who gives the worst
performance I've seen from her so far. The only decent character
here is Kevin Kline who livend the movie up some. For the
special effects, there was nothing that special, only perhaps
the giant spider which looked fake but still looked kind of
good. The plot itself is rather silly, and its hard to tell
whether this movie should be considered a comedy or a western.
It didn't do justice for either one. This is just another case
where a studio tries to make a pretty looking movie that they
hope will be a summer blockbuster, and they sacrafice everything
else for it. Hopefully Will Smith will return with a much better
film and redeem himself after this.
I give Wild Wild West 2 out of 5 stars
Review written December 8, 1999.
