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Wild Wild West
*1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
USA
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
Written by Brent Maddock, Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman and S.S. Wilson
From a story by Jim Thomas and John Thomas
Based upon the TV show "The Wild Wild West", created by Michael
Garrison
CAST.....
Will Smith..... James T. West
Kevin Kline..... Artemus Gordon/President Ulysses S. Grant
Kenneth Branagh..... Dr. Arliss Loveless
Salma Hayek..... Rita Escobar
Ted Levine..... General McGrath
Frederique Van Der Wal..... Amazonia
Musetta Vander..... Munitia
M. Emmet Walsh..... Coleman
Cinema is the ultimate art form, because it can
incorporate all the others. My imagination, intellect and emotion have been
brought many spectacular places by film, and that's why I fell in love with
the medium. That's also why films like "Wild Wild West" are
so confounding. How can studios pour millions of dollars and masses of talent
into that a project that inspires such apathy? And how can they release it
on the 100th anniversary of Alfred Hitckcock's birth?
"Wild Wild West" is based on a TV show from the
1960s, which I can't remember, but am told is good. It had to be better than
this. Set in the late 1800s, after the American Civil War, the movie follows
the team of Jim West (Will Smith) and Artemus Gordon (Kevin Kline), federal
agents hand-picked by President Ulysses S. Grant (Kline again) to find out
who has been kidnapping the nation's top scientists. West, a man of action,
and Gordon, a master of disguise and gadgets, soon discover that the culprit
is Dr. Arliss Loveless. Played by Kenneth Branagh, this villain is a deranged
member of the Confederate Army who has returned from the dead to break up
the United States and kill the President with a giant mechanical spider.
Hmm.
In a film beset by problems, the biggest with
"Wild Wild West" is a lack of direction. It doesn't know what kind of film
it wants to be, and isn't light-hearted or loose enough to be corny fun like
"The Mummy", or clever enough to get genuine laughs. When it's obviously
trying to be funny, the jokes are clumsy, dreary and embarrassing. The filmmakers
should study "Maverick", Richard Donner's sexy 1994 Western, which had beautiful
comedy and action.
The robots and contraptions, whether devised by
Gordon or Lovelace, are almost always ugly and annoying. They fill many of
the action scenes, to grating effect, and even the beautiful photography
of Michael Ballhaus can't save these moments. Will Smith's race is also treated
clumsily -- instead of ignoring the fact that the actor is black, which has
worked fine in Westerns such as "Sommersby" and "Unforgiven" -- his character
is black as well. This leads to awkward slavery references and jokes, and
a back-story to the character that has no place in something intended as
a trivial romp.
Smith, who has an obnoxiously arrogant public
persona, is surprisingly charming, although he can't go far with the material
provided. His chemistry with Kline is virtually non-existent too, since neither
performer seems to know if he's the straight or the funny man. Kline's dual
roles are pointless , and as President Grant, he looks like Terry Wogan and
sounds like a robot. As for Kenneth Branagh, I have no idea what he was thinking
-- when you've just done Shakespeare and Woody Allen, you should set your
sights higher than a script like this.
What I will say for "Wild Wild West" is that it's
a lot less ridiculous than the trailers suggest. If you could sit through
last year's summer offerings, such as "Godzilla" and "Lost in Space", then
this, by comparison, is almost fun. And it may have some cathartic effect
-- having seen it, perhaps that bloody awful theme song will be exorcised
from my head.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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