Will Smith's Movie Adaptation Of A Classic Western TV Series Missed The Original Show's Point

Warner Bros. Pictures

The summer movie season of 1999 is hard to beat. Between May and Labor Day, we were gifted instant classics like "Notting Hill," "Run Lola Run," "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut," "The Blair Witch Project," "Eyes Wide Shut," "Dick," "The Iron Giant," "The Sixth Sense" and "Bowfinger." Obviously, the movie of the summer was "Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace," which received a mixed reception from critics and fans. But there's nothing mixed about Barry Sonnenfeld's "Wild Wild West." Just about everyone who's suffered the misfortune of sitting through that movie utterly despises it. It has a whole host of problems, but the biggest mistake was making it in the first place. After all, Baby Boomers who grew up watching "The Wild Wild West" were highly unlikely to want a counterfeit, quasi-spoof big screen re-imagining of the TV series (which ran for four seasons from 1965-1969).

When Michael Garrison created "The Wild Wild West," he was looking for a way to reinvigorate the TV Western by infusing it with a James Bond superspy aesthetic. The series starred Robert Conrad and Ross Martin as, respectively, James West and Artemis Gordon, two Secret Service agents tasked with protecting U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant from emerging threats in the post-Civil War era. West is very much 007 on a horse, a dashing and cocksure hero, while Gordon complements him perfectly as a Q-esque inventor of gadgets and a master of disguise. They traverse the West on a private train and encounter a wild assortment of colorful villains.

Sounds like the movie, right? On paper, it's basically the same. It's just that the Will Smith-led film adaptation is horribly miscast and tonally off. Every creative decision is botched, so that no one (old fans or newcomers) could possibly enjoy it.

CBS

While "The Wild Wild West" has a sense of humor about itself, the laughs are generally derived from Gordon's elaborate disguises. He can just as easily pretend to be a British big game hunter with the ostentatious name of Sir Ian Jellicoe Cooper-Featherstone as he can a cheerfully alcoholic Civil War lieutenant named Jonathan Greely. These are broad alter-egos, but they never overwhelm the action-packed plots.

And that's what that stinks about "Wild Wild West": Its set pieces are played for laughs. It's a movie that's afraid to embrace its own outlandish premise, so it makes fun of itself instead. This leaves us with James West, who, as played by Will Smith, is nowhere near as bruisingly proficient in punch-ups as Robert Conrad's iteration. Kevin Kline is equally awful as Gordon, who's portrayed as a clown before he gets into costume.

The movie so deeply travestied the series that Conrad spoke out about it. He thought West should've been a Wesley Snipes-Denzel Washington combo (I think Snipes would've been perfect straight-up), but he was most upset about Kenneth Branagh playing the villainous Dr. Loveless. In the show, the character's brilliantly depicted by little person actor Kevin Dunn. But rather than honor Dunn's memory by casting another little person actor, the film turns the character into a double-amputee. Again, it's a grievous violation of what made the show special.

10 years after the film's release, Smith agreed with Conrad's criticisms. Later, in his memoir, "Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time: True Stories from a Career in Hollywood," Sonnenfeld argued the movie could've worked if George Clooney hadn't dropped out of playing Gordon.

Having seen it, I can attest: nothing would've fixed "Wild Wild West." It's a misconceived, lead balloon of a movie.