As a fan of the original TV show, I was really rooting for "Wild Wild West" to succeed. Imagine my disappointment then, when it turned out to be a complete failure, a dud of a movie, a huge disaster; in a word, it just plane sucked. There were so many mistakes and errors made by the so-called "filmmakers" that I'm not even sure where to start. First, casting Will Smith. Unless your willing to completely disregard the history of the late nineteenth century and make race a complete non-factor (which is not what the writers chose to do) there is no way to sell a black James West. Hell, the giant mechanical spider was more realistic than a black army officer in the post Civil War army. Don't get me wrong, I love Will Smith, but because he is black this role was just not right for him. Second, the writing. Four people are credited with the screenplay, and God only knows how many others "polished" the script along the way. Yet, with all this talent involved, the end result is hideous. It reminds me of the old maxim that a thousand monkeys randomly typing on typewriters would produce Shakespeare sooner or later; well in this case, they had a lot of writers carefully and selectively typing on typewriters, and they didn't get within a parsec of Shakespeare. The story and characters were all wrong (they needed to look at the original show, which got it right), the dialogue is truly pathetic (I got real sick of West and Gordon saying "We have to save OUR president" "That monster is after OUR president") and NONE of the jokes work. The absolute lowest point was when the writers tried to milk humor from a lynching; perhaps in their next effort, the writers will find the humor in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, or the killing fields of Bosnia. The musical score was also a complete failure; it was flat, unimaginative, boring and unengaging. The music should have been building suspense, providing a rousing theme, etc. Except, about all it provided was a headache and all it roused was my ire. "Wild Wild West" is the posterchild for the hallow, overhyped Hollywood movie that is supposed to be a guaranteed blockbuster (see also "Judge Dredd" and "The Avengers"), and it truly deserves the heaps of scorn and criticism which have been dumped on it. I can only pray that Smith's next project can restore his now tarnished reputation, and that Barry Sonnenfeld never makes another movie again as long as he lives.
Review of Wild Wild West
