WILD WILD WEST (1999) *1/2 Will Smith is a James Bond type of a U.S. Marshall after the Civil War, but his greatest burden is being paired with Kevin Kline, who is trying to invent things. They have a substantial special effects budget and some of the props are great-kind of a cross between Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and War of the Worlds . The inventions are relentless and could have been a positive thing, on balance, if they'd all either lent themselves to the plot or actors' strengths as well as the special knife boot. Some of the lines are pretty good but neither Smith nor Kline are great or awful delivering them. Kenneth Branagh lends Shakespearean zeal to his New Orleans doctor trying to rise the south because he doesn't have anything else to rise. Ha ha! the film is full of dick jokes. Although the gentle entendres veer into decidedly politically incorrect territory; black jokes (but without the N word) and amputee ones issued with a dull edge, there is no question that Mr. Smith has decided to pursue a sort of Cosby-like respectability at the expense of Richard Pryor or (early) Eddie Murphy guts and brilliance (which, I guess, were never an option for him anyway, now that I think on it). Bad news for his view from posterity, though it'll probably land him in some statehouse as a Republican-at which point he'll either realize the futility of his ways or something worse will happen.
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