Wild Wild West

James West and Artemus Gordon are chosen by the President to find the man responsible for the kidnapping of the Nation’s top scientists, and threatening to take over the United States within a week.

I did not laugh once during this entire picture. When you consider that this film is a part-comedy, that’s not a very good sign. I also did not tense up or particularly enjoy any of its unenergetic action sequences which provided me with little more than a few minutes time to think back to the lovely Salma Hayek scenes. When you consider that the other “part” of this film is geared as an action/adventure, I would say that this another negative sign. And when you consider that the first hour of the film was boring and a little slow, the story-line tired, reminiscent of Swiss cheese and uninvolving, and the special effects interesting but worth very little inside a plot filled with lame one-liners, weak characterizations and an anti-climactic end, you pretty much have the gist of my impression of this “big” summer blockbuster. It blows. Or as they say in French, “Eet blows”.

Could it be that the script was crappy because it took four people to write it? Maybe. Could it be that most of the special effects don’t show up until the last half hour, and even then, we don’t see anything that its trailers hadn’t already given away? Perhaps. Or could it be that we have come to expect so much more from Will Smith and Hollywood big-budget movies, that we cannot help but evaluate them on a scale onto their own? Naaaaaaah! A bad movie is a bad movie. On a positive note, I could honestly say that I did very much enjoy the lovely performance by the adorable Salma Hayek, who seemed underused (In my humble opinion), and lit up every bubbly scene that she was hardly in. Branagh was also fun as the scenery-munching, over-the-top bad guy, but that’s pretty much where the entertainment-buck stopped. Smith and Kline were static at best, the plot full of holes, and the score insignificant and derivative of a dozen others. I would strongly advise anyone not to see this movie. Then again, there is that one scene with the lovely Salma Hayek tied up in a cage…huh…oh yeah, but the rest of the movie sucked.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian