This movie infuriates me, in an intellectual sort of way.
Wild Wild West had the budget. It had the actors. It had the director. It had giant spider mecha. And it had the original source material to rip off, dammit. That’s the part that bugs me: if the scriptwriters sucked so badly, why didn’t they just steal more from the TV show? It was right there! Who the hell was going to complain?
But I’m not bitter*!
Moe Lane
PS: I still remember the horror that slowly seeped into the souls of me and my buddy when we went to see this flick. It had Will Smith and Kenneth Branagh in it, we told ourselves. It has to be good! And then we watched on as the movie indicated that it did not have to be good. Quite the opposite, really.
*ANNOUNCER: In reality, he was bitter.
Reminds me of a bit in one of the early Rifftrax riffs.
Mike: “Jar Jar is bad, but this film bothers me on a more existential level”
Kevin: “You mean, this film bugs your soul?”
Mike: “… Yes.”
Will Smith was never that good. Amiable. Pleasant. Inoffensive. But not good. And over the years as money has eroded the mask, inoffensive amiable and pleasant has been replaced with bitter, nepotistic and racist, which occludes any fond memories there were.
There were a couple movies in this time frame that were magnificent disappointments. This one cannot hold a candle to that paragon of putrescence … Cutthroat Island.
I never even saw that one. How bad was it, on the Batman & Robin scale?
Cutthroat Island? I’m not even sure I could quantify how bad that movie is. But, PLEASE do not take this as a challenge for you to go and watch that disaster.
I have enough on my conscience as it is.
To echo jeboyle, Batman and Robin barely nudges the needle on the Cutthroat Island scale.
I’ll just note that Amazon does not currently have “Cutthroat Island” in their video library.
.
They will, however, charge me $3.99 to stream “Batman and Robin”.
.
I think that says enough about how bad “Cutthroat Island” is.
.
Mew
How bad is Cutthroat Island on a scale of 1 to Freddie Got Fingered? The latter is the only movie I’ve ever seen where the ticket seller asked me why I’d want to go see that movie.
…The ticket seller, I feel, can be excused for asking that aloud.
Oh, absolutely, and I wish I’d heeded his warning.
It is quite possibly the worst big budget movie I have ever seen. And that includes such luminaries as Valerian and the 1000 whatevers.
.
It is so bad that Frank Langella could not improve it.
‘Wild Wild West’ wasn’t just awful ..
.
As Moe notes, because the writers were too .. arrogant, perhaps? .. to steal from the source material, but also too stupid to understand more than the cheap laughs in the source material ..
.
What we got looks, at first glance, like a solid ‘Wild Wild West’ episode … but watching it, all the ‘smart’ pieces were somehow deleted.
.
Unforgivable.
.
Mew
Oh, come now. Valerian was at least a visual treat. And I maintain that if you cut out the first ten minutes or so of banal, insulting, exposition-heavy conversation (either replacing it with some in medias res action or omitting the section entirely), what remains is not half-bad.
.
It might be barely more than half-good, even.
At least it had some decent actors in it. “Wing Commander” did not. And it can only be acquired on disc as well.
There are far, far worse movies than Cutthroat Island. The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Master of Disguise, Glitter, Gili, Either version of Rollerball (but the new one is worse)…all make Cutthroat Island look like Citizen Kane.
And then there’s Eregon.
From my personal experience, I nominate movies such as Serenity (NOT the Firefly big-screen outing, the one with Matthew McConaughey), Mother!, The Lobster, Swiss Army Man, Monkey Up!, Norm of the North, Yellow Day, Snowtime!, and Amerigeddon.
.
I saw most of these in theaters, at full price.
.
It’s not so bad, though, going to see the weird, off-beat movies. Every once in a while, you’ll run across a movie like The Witch, or A Ghost Story, or Risen, or Midnight Special, or Into the Forest. Those make it worthwhile.
Master of Disguise cannot be understood merely as a movie .. as with the Traveling Wilburys, there’s a backstory that’s necessary to “get it”.
.
(had it been slightly better, it might’ve achieved the Wilburys’ ability to transcend their origins..)
.
In both cases, the goal was to give money to a legend who’d hit hard times .. Dana Carvey and Roy Orbison respectively.
.
Mew
So Dana Carvey’s wrecked career created Master of Disguise…I always thought it was the other way around.