        James West and Artemus Gordon return to the screen in a big way. But, like they say bigger is not necessarily better. While Wild Wild West is a good movie, I would not consider it the summer's runaway hit either. Some things in it gel together beautifully while others just grate at you until you want to give up all sense of propriety and yell out "Where's the continuity girl". Before I go any further I will give you a rundown of the movie. We are introduced to two US Marshals who do not know each other and are working on a similiar case. Eventually they both are pushed into working together by President Ulysses S. Grant. They must work together to stop an assassination attempt on the President by diabolical genius Dr. Arliss Loveless. Kenneth Branagh plays the wheel chair bound baddie. Dr. Loveless lost the half of his body in the Civil War. Needless to say he is a little vengeful and figures that if re-ignites the civil war the south will win. Pooling their talents, James and Artemus soon discover that he plans to use a giant walking mechanical device called THE TARANTULA to kill the President. It is a deadly device loaded with weapons of destruction. The two end up having to use all their ingenuity to defeat this device, Dr. Loveless and all his minions. While the film has excellent moments the best are when Will Smith and Kevin Kline are going at each other. The mechanical spider scenes are, in my opinion, out of place and we could have done quite well without. Western movies do not need sci-fi effects to be good, just look at last years, ZORRO. Watching this gigantic mechicanical wonder stomp a western town composed of about twenty buildings made of wood made the scene look laughable, by today's standards. As far as I am concerned Kenneth Branagh walked away with the picture whenever he was on screen and I can not help but feel that nouveau actor, Smith was intimidated by having to work with both Branagh and Kline. The interesting thing about this is that Will Smith actually acts in this film and is not always the character we are used to seeing. Continuity is a big issue in this picture. Too many times things seemed to happen that did not quite flow from scene to scene. I suspect that there was a lot cut out. The sci-fi element is out of place as well. Granted when the series THE WILD WILD WEST was on television it was meant to be a little sci-fi but it owed more to spy technology not science fiction. Robert Conrad(James West) and Ross Martin(Artemus Gordon) were the James Bonds of the time. Not so in this film...almost but not quite there. Will Smith does a fine job and shows he is an actor for the future; Kevin Kline does a great job but Kenneth Branagh does a remarkable job and of course Salma Hayek is just Salma Hayek. Put everything together and you will find it worth putting your money down at the boxoffice to see WILD WILD WEST. I found it a lot more entertaining than Star Wars Episode One. Okay now don't send any hate mail after all I enjoyed THE MUMMY more than Star Wars.
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