Westward, No

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Wild, Wild West poses this not very pressing question: Can a comedy--we use that term in the broadest possible sense--costing something north of $100 million hope to succeed solely on the basis of special effects, cross-dressing and a vertically challenged villain? The depressing answer, given the apparently endless supply of adolescents with nothing better to do in the summer, is probably yes.

But for adults with fond recall of the retro James Bond TV show on which the movie is based, and with more recent memories of the sharp yet genial bite of director Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black and Get Shorty, the film is an unmitigated disaster. That's especially so considering that hotheaded Jim West is played by the coolly calculating Will Smith, his epicurean colleague Artemus Gordon by the subtly self-regarding Kevin Kline and Dr. Arliss Loveless by Kenneth Branagh, who seems more amused by Loveless' absolute evil than any audience will be.

You can't really blame the actors for the failure of a raft of screenwriters to provide them with even vaguely funny lines. They were doubtless too busy helping invent the film's visual effects, which most prominently include the gigantic mechanical tarantula with which Loveless hopes to induce a post-Civil War U.S. to surrender its sovereignty to him. But like men in frocks or the doctor's steam-driven wheelchair, it is just a sight gag--a one-shot deal out of which you cannot build intricately sustained comedy. The movie is loaded with this junk, but it has no authentic momentum or satirical viewpoint--and is finally lost to its own desperate, unavailing search for a laugh.

--By Richard Schickel