by Jerry Roberts

June 9, 2002

This movie came packed with so much vanity that I expected to get a free make-up mirror with the purchase of my ticket.

Wild Wild West is proof that nothing kills a movie like the assumption that the creative team from one hit movie can’t go wrong with their next one. It’s a house built on sand, a movie made with the assumption that any big summer special effects movie starring Will Smith and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (both from the wonderful Men in Black) is going to be an instant hit. Bzzzt! Wrong! Thank you for playing!

The movie throws us headfirst into the adventures of Jim West (Will Smith) a post-war Federal Agent in an America that is going through reconstruction. How did a black man in the 19th century manage to become a federal agent? You’ve got me there. He is assigned by President Grant to find out who is kidnapping and/or killing the country’s best scientists. His partner is an addle-brained inventor named Artimus Gordon (Kevin Kline) and naturally, because this movie runs the cop-buddy cliché playbook, they hate each other, fight the whole time and then learn to except one another. Yaaaaawn!

Gordon can conjure up an invention for just about anything and is a master of disguise. His first disguise is of President Grant himself. Now, since Kline plays both Gordon and Grant in the film, why introduce Kline as Gordon pretending to be Grant then introduce Grant who isn’t Gordon? See, the question I’ve just asked is less thought than was given to the screenplay. In fact, given this script, more thought seemed to have been given to the design of the Burger King cups.

Salma Hayek gets dragged into this mess as eye candy. She’s Rita Escobar the daughter of one of the scientists who functions in this movie only to provide that information, show a little skin and stand behind the men, heaving and looking sexy. The spark that this charming actress had in Fools Rush In and Dogma is a forgotten memory here. My suggestion would have been to introduce her as one of the kidnapped scientists. What’s that you say? A woman scientist would have been unheard of in the 19th century? Well, if the Federal Marshall can be black then why can’t the brilliant scientist be a played by a beautiful Latino woman? Sorry but I believe in equal opportunity inaccuracies. It’s only fair.

Anyway, back to the “story”. Gordon aquires the head of one of the dead scientists and is able to project the last thing that the man saw. He turns up a picture of a thick-bearded former confederate General named “Bloodbath” McGrath who has a small horn screwed into the side of his head. He, by the way, is played under a twelve-pound beard by Ted Levine who was so effective as the transvestite killer Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs (there are no slackers in this cast). This leads him to the mastermind behind these foul deeds, a legless confederate named Arliss Loveless played by Kenneth Branaugh (again, no slackers), who wants to assassinate Grant, reignite the war, give the U.S. to England and Spain and keep a little for himself. To do this, he employs giant steam-powered spiders that shoot fire (uh-huh).

To be honest, the spiders are really the point of the whole movie. $180 million worth of special effects are put into play under the movie’s other false assumption: A gallery of over-produced digital effects are the answer to what ails a weary screenplay. Bzzzzzzzzt! Wrong Again! Take your lifetime supply of Rice-A-Roni and begone!

There is a story behind the making of this film that is funnier than anything that the movie can provide. The special effects shots were all created first before the script was even finished. When they finally started shooting, the budget had ballooned way out of reason so they had to use what they had no matter what. Then the movie underwent costly re-shoots to try and interject some funny scenes after test audiences weren't sure if it was supposed to be a comedy. Truthfully, I’ve seen the finished product and I’m still not sure.

Those jokes, by the way, are so desperately out of date that you and I know them in our sleep. Wild Wild West even stoops to a movie comedy’s lowest common denominator by having the characters dress in drag to fool the crooks. This is, of course, followed by the required moment in which the villain makes a pass at the hero. That joke was worn out when the Three Stooges were doing it.

Alongside that ancient run-through, you watch as one sight gag, one-liner and pun falls like a brick. The most painful is a scene in which Smith tries to talk his way out of being strung up by a lynch mob. In a laughless comedy, racist jokes are daggers.

The western comedy is dead. A great one would have to be something truly original. Mel Brooks wrote the last word in western comedies with Blazing Saddles back in 1974 and I’ll happily take that bean-eating scene from that movie as a comment on this one.