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Barry Sonnenfeld is reunited with his MEN IN BLACK star Will Smith in this gadget-soaked romp based (loosely) on the 1960s television show. WILD WILD WEST supplies many impressive visuals (thanks to brilliant production designer Bo Welch) and some hearty laughs. Will Smith is James West, a Civil War hero and U.S. marshal inclined to shoot first and ask questions later. His partner is the wacky inventor and pseudointellectual Artemus Gordon (Kevin Kline). The team is created when the world's leading scientists are kidnapped by a diabolical madman named Dr. Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh), and President Ulysses S. Grant (also played by Kevin Kline) wants his two best men on the job. Loveless's machines have the creepy fun feeling of EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (Welch again)--many of them have a spider motif--and Artemus Gordon rivals him with his own fun inventions. An odd but enjoyable blend of science fiction and old-school Western, WILD WILD WEST is packed with cool images and slick action sequences.
If you want to laugh, this is a good movie to watch.
I bought this DVD for 2nd time, but it was a good price and I didn't wait to long before it was here, good movie, funny, plus I like all Will Smith's movie's, so good buy and do recommend.
The movie was pretty much a flop to begin with; I remember reading that Will Smith said himself after the movie was in theatres, that it single handedly ruined the Western movie genre for that time! The original TV series was fun to watch and I did as a kid, but as it turns out, a lot of television shows back then sometimes left a lot to be desired! I wanted this DVD movie just to watch it again; one can cringe at some of the plot scenes while watching it, but sometimes, that's just how it goes!
Everything about WILD WILD WEST, the movie, is just plain bad: tacky special effects; clumsy direction; an embarrassing screenplay; plus a fine, bewildered cast wasted in totally unworkable roles. But as bad as everything else is, the base rot of WWW goes directly to its reworked premise. No matter how open minded one might be, or how much one prides oneself on being socially color blind, there is just no way to honestly accept replacing Robert Conrad, TV's James West, with Will Smith. The time and the place dictate that James West be a white male -- unless, the filmmakers acknowledge and embrace the incongruity and use it for a real purpose.
Yet, the filmmakers want it both ways: the audience is expected to be able to ignore Smith's skin color, while at the same time the entire plot is based on his confrontation with a white racist trying to reestablish Confederate power and seize control of the U.S. government. How can you respect or believe in a film or filmmakers that get all preachy about the evils of racism while all along dealing with the issue with absolutely no respect for historical honesty? It is not clear if having Smith play James West as a cocky, street smart, John Shaft-style character was intended to be a joke, social commentary or just absurd politically correct pandering to black audiences, but it is clear that it does not work. The most outrageously unbelievable thing about WILD WILD WEST is not the wildly improbable sci-fi inventions but that the Smith character actually makes it to the end of the film without being lynched. It's not that the anachronism of a cocksure 20th century black man confronting 19th century bigotry isn't workable, because that very time-warp racial comedy had already been done with much greater success in the Mel Brooks classic, BLAZING SADDLES. Unlike WWW, Brooks and company realized the sheer idiocy of the premise, yet used that to mock both the black and the white stereotypes with equal glee.
Where BLAZING SADDLES is an honest farce, WILD WILD WEST is dishonest and cowardly. All involved probably thought they were being pretty daring by flaunting convention and hiring Smith, but they did not hire Will Smith the African American, they hired Will Smith the action hero movie star. They built WILD WILD WEST around Smith's race, but only to exploit his contemporary Hollywood image, even to the point of letting him create and perform a totally inappropriate (and totally bad) rap song at the end. You can sense the film exploiting both Smith's star image and his race, while not wishing to risk challenging either. The film tries to reinvent "The Wild Wild West" TV show, but the changes are literally skin deep. To really explore and compare racism in America by blending the attitudes of two different American centuries would have been too wild wild of an idea for these timid timid filmmakers.Read full review
This modern western has Will Smith playing Captain James West and Kevin Kline playing Artemus Gordon, two good guys fighting one bad guy, who was played by Kenneth Branagh as Dr. Arliss Loveless including Selma Hayek as Rita Escobar. A fantastic cast and The movie's truly a great modern A must see for those of Us who remember the original Wild Wild West TV Series. A must see five stars out of five.