Stealth Entertainment
Wild Wild West
By Scott Lumley
September 11, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.
Hopefully we'll stumble across some entertainment that may have slid under your radar. Wish us luck.
Wild Wild West (1999)
For the longest time, Will Smith has been revered as a box office demigod. Hopeful studios bring truckloads of money to his home hoping he will bless them and their picture with his presence. Bloodthirsty producers sacrifice virgin scriptwriters to appease his wrath. Having Will Smith attach his name to your picture is nearly a license to print money. He's pretty much the Michael Jordan of Hollywood at the moment.
And yet, he's far from bulletproof. Will has a number of titles he'd really rather we don't recall. Bagger Vance comes to mind. I am forced (unwillingly) to remember Men in Black II as well. (And what a freaking disaster that film was.) But Will's biggest flop ever was Wild Wild West. Let's take a look at that one, shall we?
At first glance, Wild Wild West doesn't look like a flop. It made almost $200 million. Unfortunately, it cost $170 million to produce and was rapidly blown out of the top slot in theatres in the span of one week, falling from an opening weekend of $36.4 million all the way down to $16.8 million for a drop of 54%. Ouch. The public recognized this one as a stinker right away and stayed away in droves. Only the worldwide totals salvaged this from being an unmitigated disaster and with the marketing campaign this one got, I'm still unsure if this film even actually turned a profit.
Wild Wild West stars Smith as Jim West, Kevin Kline as Artemis Gordon, Salma Hayak as Rita Escobar and Kenneth Branagh as Dr. Arliss Loveless. That's a fairly impressive cast for the time, and actually it would still be impressive today.
Wild Wild West is based loosely (very loosely) on the TV show Wild Wild West, but it should tell you a lot that when the producers offered a part to Robert Conrad (the original James T. West in the TV show), he shot them down because he felt the movie was not respectful to the series on which it was based. Ouch. When a TV actor past his prime turns you down flat, that should be a strong indicator that something has gone drastically wrong somewhere.
This film really should have been great. It had a great cast and an almost unlimited budget, but somewhere, somehow, the producers decided to take every aspect of the original TV show and amplify it to the point of absurdity. Case in point, the original James T. West was a capable white gentleman that Conrad played like a low key James Bond. He could use his fists or his gun if he needed to, but in the show his brain was his best weapon. Smith plays West like a brainless superman. He's unbeatable in fisticuffs or gunplay, yet he rarely uses his brain at all. At one point his ally Gordon says, "We need a plan!" and West simply shuts him down, stating, "We don?t have time for that." Jim West doesn't have time for a plan? The movie even takes pains to mock him for that, with the President casually commenting on how his "Shoot first, shoot again, shoot some more and then think about asking a question" approach isn't called for in every situation.
Naturally, they counterbalance West with Artemis Gordon, originally played by Ross Martin and played here by Kline. Gordon is actually my favorite character in this film. Kline does a nice job of working with what he's given, which is essentially a half buffoon-half braniac sidekick role. Still, he reigns himself in while holding his own against Smith's powerful screen presence. Kline has possibly the funniest moment in the whole movie, when he finally goes ballistic after dealing with West's inability to do anything but charge headlong into battle. His minute long rant is ridiculously funny and unfortunately is one of the only genuinely funny things in the whole film. It's nice that West just quietly stands there and takes it, too, because the event that pre-empted the tirade was entirely his fault.
Unfortunately, while Kline plays Gordon carefully and meticulously, Branagh plays Loveless with much less restraint. I'd like to say that he chewed the scenery, but really, it was like watching a great white work over a baby seal. While Branagh makes Loveless memorable, he does so in a way that makes the character cartoonish. It?s a disservice to the movie when the primary villain, the man responsible for nearly dismembering the United States, is pretty much an overacted joke.
And of course, there's Selma Hayek. Selma plays the most dispensable character in the whole film, serving no purpose other than to add a little T&A and act as one more hurdle for West and Gordon to deal with as they clamor for her attention while pursuing Loveless. Her character adds nothing to the film other than that, and she literally could have been played by any hot young female in Hollywood at the time. This film was literally a waste of her talent.
So while the characters are hit and miss, (mostly miss) the script itself is an absolute disaster. Of particular note is the interplay between West and Loveless as they lob racial and handicap jokes at each other constantly. It's not well done and about as subtle as a brick to the forehead, and while the first scene was moderately amusing, the second time they start barraging each other it's not only tasteless, it's highly improbable.
Finally, I need to bring up the weapon of mass destruction that Loveless creates to bring the USA to its knees. Kevin Smith eviscerated it completely during his original An Evening with Kevin Smith show, so a lot of people know about it. It doesn't make it any less ridiculous to see it firsthand, however. It's an interesting, well done special effect, but it's still completely out of left field.
And even with some really well done special effects, you can still see some horrible filming mistakes. One sequence involving saw blades and magnets has some absolutely horrible jump cuts that don't even attempt to make sense. Considering the amount of detail spent on other aspects of the film, there's some sloppy work very plainly visible in the finished product of a film that cost $170 million to produce.
Wild Wild West is a train wreck of a film. Bad scripting, out of control actors and producers that appeared to be on recreational pharmaceuticals doomed this picture from the get go. There are definitely bright spots, (some of the special effects, Kevin Kline) but they're buried in a pile of absurd plotting and atrocious characterization. The producers of this film took a great cast and an intriguing concept, mated it with a popular, if ancient TV show and completely wasted all that potential. On the plus side, Wild Wild West's abysmal performance completely destroyed any chance of a sequel. On the negative side, Wild Wild West deserved a lot better than this half-baked effort.