Cinematic Excrement: Episode 126 - Wild Wild West

welcome ladies and gentlemen to cinematic excrement and my ongoing quest to review every movie that has won the razzie for worst picture and tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999. ah that was a memorable year and not just because i graduated high school i'm old it's also the year the matrix at theaters i and pretty much my entire circle of friends were obsessed with this movie when it came out it had a cool science fiction story the outfits were the epitome of badass it showed keanu reeves can actually turn in a decent performance under the right circumstances and the bullet time effects were groundbreaking and for many people it was likely their first experience watching a pirated movie downloaded off the internet and boy was that a weird experience you kids have no idea how good you have it today with your pirate wait wait wait i'm sorry i gotta put on my old man voice for this you kids today have no idea how good you have it with your pirate bays and your torrents and lime wires or whatever it is you kids use back in my day we had to plug a 56k modem into a phone jack which meant while you were on the internet no one can make a phone call and you had to dial into your aol or campus server whatever and it took days to download a movie honest to god days and the movie had this superimposee up in the corner which i think was the pirate's calling card i don't know and it was in a four to three aspect ratio because we didn't have widescreen monitors in those days that's why whenever you watch an old-timey tv show they got these black bars on the sides and half the soundtrack was missing from that thing because i think it was stolen from the studio before it was finished you know the nightclub scene no music bunch of damn kids dancing around to nothing that's what we had to deal with and we were grateful oh and before anyone accuses me of encouraging piracy i did actually buy the movie on dvd back in the day and i currently own the entire collection on blu-ray bought and paid for so anyway despite the huge fandom and the enormous influence it had on the entertainment industry after a few years it almost entirely faded from the public consciousness it was like the anti-blade runner initially it was everywhere and then it was nowhere very odd for a movie as loved and influential as the matrix perhaps the lackluster sequels had something to do with that however it seems to have undergone a resurgence in recent years after people realized it was made by two trans women and works remarkably well as a trans allegory 18 year old me certainly would not have called that although 18 year old me was very 18 year old me now you might be wondering why am i wasting so much time talking about the matrix well believe it or not it does have a connection to the movie i'm reviewing today wild wild west directed by barry sonnenfeld who is probably best known for the first three men in black movies wild wild west was very loosely based on the 1960s tv show the wild wild west starring robert conrad and ross martin as secret service agents james west and artemis gordon the show was a spy thriller set in the old west during the grant administration described by the show's creator michael garrison as james bond on horseback west was strong handsome a hit with the ladies and always ready for action much like the iconic british super spy they even share the same first name which is probably not a coincidence meanwhile gordon who used to be in show business would often rely on brilliant disguises and inventive gadgets sort of the cue to west bond if you will together the heroes would foil the plans of those who wanted to take over the world or at least a part of it with gordon's gadgets and wes good old-fashioned fisticuffs the show was well before my time but i have seen a few episodes and i can understand why it was so popular back in the day it was a lot of fun it was action-packed conrad even did most of his own stunts until he got hurt and the stunt gone wrong and then the studio insisted on a double gordon's gadgets and disguises were fun albeit a bit silly at times it really was james bond on horseback but it was also a product of its time and by that i mean red face yeah this was unfortunately a common practice at the time casting white actors to play non-white roles and somehow it still occurs in modern times hollywood whitewashing how is this still a thing like i said i've only seen a handful of episodes of the wild wild west but somehow i swear half of those episodes featured white dudes playing native americans and oh god the cringe and it's painfully obvious too even during the show's first season which was shot in black and white i mean look at this guy ain't no way you can look at that and tell me that's not a white dude in cheap makeup in fact that's drew barrymore's father no really anyway the show did well in the ratings but due to congressional concerns with violence on tv in the wake of the kennedy and mlk assassinations it was cancelled by cbs after four seasons it did get a couple of tv movie revivals in 1979 and 1980 but plans to do more movies were scrapped after ross martin sadly passed away in 1981 but that would not be the end as warner brothers optioned the film rights in 1992 and started work on bringing the wild wild west to the big screen and so with the the article dropped from the title wild wild west hit theaters in the summer of 1999 with will smith as james west and kevin klein in a dual role as artemis gordon and president grant it had a 170 million dollar production budget likely due to the extravagant special effects at the time it was the most expensive movie ever made when adjusting for inflation but it only made about 114 million domestically while the international box office brought the total to 222 million dollars when factoring in marketing costs it was still a flop the critics hated it robert conrad hated it and the razzies heaped five awards on it including worst picture worst director or screenplay worth screen couple for smith and klein and worst original song for will smith's wiki wiki wild wild west although that was the only song nominated which seems like cheating even by razzy standards meanwhile the matrix made 463 million dollars worldwide received widespread critical acclaim had a pretty cool soundtrack and took home four academy awards there i go talking about the matrix again why do i keep doing that well i'm sure a lot of you know this already but will smith was originally approached to play neo in the matrix but he thought the special effects they were going for were too ambitious and feared they wouldn't work so he turned them down and chose to play jim west instead insert meme here now smith did state later that he probably did the matrix a favor by not playing neo as he didn't think he was mature enough as an actor at the time and would have just screwed it up and honestly he might have a point there and keon reeves did fine as neo so it all worked out but we will always wonder what could have been if smith did not turn them down it would have been a very different movie well let's look at how wild wild west ended up being a wild wild mess the movie opens with some old dude running through the woods with a huge metal collar around his neck while a giant saw blade chases after him and he mutters something about a giant spider and warning the president before he loses his head the blade which has an image of a spider on it is retrieved by a former confederate general with a trumpet permanently fused to his ear this is the first minute of the movie and already i have many questions question number one what these giant collars and saw blades come into play later on in the film when our heroes find themselves in a similar predicament the collars which are clearly too small for their heads to fit through but they somehow put them on anyway have some super strong magnets that attract those giant saw blades and somehow nothing else made of metal and the magnets magically stop working once the blade finds its target and the collars are sometimes attracted to each other depending on what the director finds funny at the time don't ask me to explain how any of this works insert meme here i can however explain why this confederate jackass has a trumpet permanently fused to his ear it's so they can do a cheap sight gag later on in the film when he dies pointless adorable but pointless anyway we first meet jim wait a minute is it me or is the town slanted did i put on battlefield earth by mistake like i said we first meet u.s army captain james west getting his freak on with a lady in a water tower i hope that's a water stop for the trains and not the town's drinking water ew he's chasing after general ear trumpet because the general was responsible for the slaughter of jim's family coincidentally general ear trumpet is also being pursued by u.s marshal artemis gordon an alleged master of disguise i say alleged because yeah this is how our heroes are introduced folks one is butt ass naked in a water tower and the other is dressed as a very unconvincing woman except everyone in the movie is fooled by that disguise because they're stupid through a wacky turn of events west and gordon end up getting in each other's way allowing for general ear trumpet to escape and then a wagon full of nitro crashes into the building and explodes but for reasons that are never made clear both west and gordon escaped the explosion unscathed so we have a woman who is obviously one of our heroes in drag but none of the other characters realize it we have an explosion that easily should have killed everyone in real life but somehow they're just fine this is a bug's bunny cartoon except you know not funny well west and gordon are summoned to the white house and hold the phone why are there sheep on the white house lawn i know they had sheep grazing on the white house lawn during the wilson administration but this movie takes place about 50 years before that i don't think grant had sheep at the white house and i'm pretty sure construction on the capitol dome was finished by the time grant took office were the writers that clueless about american history or did they just not care anyway president grant informs our heroes that several top-notch scientists have been kidnapped in recent months by some as yet unknown terrorists demanding the surrender of the united states government and he left them a gift a cake crawling with spiders i see an obvious flaw in this plan even if they wanted to surrender it's kind of hard to do so when you don't know to whom you are surrendering my fellow americans as president of the united states of america i would hereby like to announce that we surrender you know just in general so if anyone is looking to take over i guess now would be the time doors open the president has tasked west and gordon to find this madman and stop him which irks both of our heroes as they have no desire to work together and by this point i think it's safe to say any fan of the tv show would have recognized this movie bears almost no resemblance to the source material not only was there no antagonism between west and gordon in the show but the wild wild west wasn't a comedy it had the occasional comedic elements but it was first and foremost a dramatic series now it's possible the movie took some inspiration from the tv movie revivals which were notably sillier than the series one of them even featured gordon disguised as a saloon girl so i guess we know where they got that idea however despite the silliness conrad and martin still played it straight they were still the exact same characters the viewers remembered just a bit older smith and klein however are not even attempting to play this straight they're in a comedy and they're acting like it even so wild wild west might have had a chance of working as a comedy as long as it was actually funny but oh no no no no no no no it wasn't for example as our heroes are planning to infiltrate a costume party attended by general ear trumpet and his friends of the south they have an unnecessarily long discussion about the quality of gordon's prosthetic breasts and of course the conductor of their private train one of the few things in this movie that does resemble the show overhears them talking about touching each other's breasts i knew it get it he thinks they're gay isn't that hilarious and clever and oh so [ __ ] original now if you thought that was dumb let me just assure you it gets worse west and gordon infiltrate the confederate costume party though west refuses to wear a costume because he's stupid instead he slips past the guards and sneaks into the party though once he's inside no one seems to pay any mind to the fact that a black man is attending a party hosted by confederate sympathizers so what was the point of sneaking in and here we are introduced to our villain arless loveless played by kenneth branagh who was previously thought to have been killed in the civil war but it seems he survived or at least half of him survived the character is loosely based on a popular villain from the tv show dr miguelito loveless played by michael dunn a mad scientist born with dwarfism in the show loveless ancestors owned a plot of land in california that was later reclaimed by the spanish crown and then lost for good when california was annexed by the united states initially loveless planned to reclaim his family's lost land and turn it into a haven for the disadvantaged and the downtrodden like himself but over time his plan shifted into good old-fashioned world domination loveless proved to be a very popular character after his first appearance in season one so much so that they made him a recurring villain and dunn played the character in 10 episodes of the show and i can see why he was so popular dunn was an outstanding performer and despite his small stature as dr loveless he never left any doubt that he was a credible threat to western gordon and due to his background he was a sympathetic character you may not agree with his methods but you could understand his motives and because dunn was also an accomplished singer they usually gave him an excuse to do a musical number often alongside his real-life singing partner phoebe doran i made a point to watch the wild wild west episodes featuring dunn and let me tell you that was time well spent he was such a good villain and the movie did him dirty rather than cast a little person as the villain the filmmakers decided they wanted kenneth branagh while dr loveless is still a mad scientist instead of a little person he's a full-size former confederate with a very silly configuration of facial hair who lost the lower half of his body in the war so he's kind of like darth maul if darth maul was a dork and this disappoints me more than any other aspect of the movie then again maybe i shouldn't be too disappointed that they went this route while they certainly could have cast a little person as dr loveless and done the character properly considering the quality of the jokes in this movie they definitely would have turned his size into a punchline i know this because that's exactly what they did the first time jim west and dr loveless meet they immediately proceed to trade insults based on west's race and dr loveless injury it's pretty much what you would expect how nice of you to join us tonight and add color to these monochromatic proceedings get it when a fella comes back from the dead i find that an occasion to stand up be counted get it and to answer the question that i'm sure is on your mind i do not know if dr loveless has a butthole it is implied that he has fashioned himself some sort of mechanical penis and i could have lived a long and happy life not knowing that but the state of his butthole is not entirely clear given we don't know for sure what other parts of his lower body he lost he does mention he lost 35 feet of small intestine but considering the average human small intestine is only about 20 feet long all this tells me is the writers know as much about human anatomy as they do about american history anyway dr loveless is accompanied by multiple female associates a tall woman named amazonia a weapons expert named munitia a lip reader named miss lippin reader you've gotta be kidding me show me the credits this can't be right jumping jesus on a pogo stick her name is actually miss lippin reader four grown-ass men were responsible for this movie two of them wrote tremors and two wrote who framed roger rabbit both movies that i actually enjoyed how did any combination of those four result in miss lippin reader and finally a chinese woman named miss east east is a traditional chinese family name right and if you're thinking they only named her that so they could do a lame west meets east joke well west meets east for grown-ass men moving on before my head explodes west and gordon end up rescuing a woman named rita played by selma hayek who was employed by dr loveless as wow this just got 50 shades of creepy and hayek is completely wasted on this movie she spends pretty much all of her screen time fawning over jim west and doing [ __ ] all else apart from allowing the filmmakers to put another big name on the marquee i don't know why she's here rita begs our heroes for help as her father is one of the top-notch scientists dr loveless has kidnapped and this is another way the movie did the loveless character dirty arlus loveless claims to be a scientific genius and appears to have invented several things like the powered wheelchair and the tank well before their time this would actually be consistent with miguelito loveless from the tv show who was also a scientific genius well ahead of his time the difference is megalito came up with these brilliant inventions on his own and was quite proud of that fact arliss kidnapped other brilliant minds to do his dirty work for him it kind of reduces the impact of the character when he has actual scientific geniuses doing all the work while he just takes the credit he's like elon musk except somehow douchier which i didn't think was possible anyway while dr loveless initially aligns himself with confederate sympathizers it turns out he still holds a grudge over the fact that he gave half his body to the confederacy only for them to surrender they were simply a means to an end and he ultimately betrays them after they've served their purpose his actual goal is not to restart the confederacy but to divide up the united states and return parts of it to its former owners great britain spain france the natives and mexico in a little piece for me to retire on and once again this feels like a step backward from the tv show miguelito loveless had an actual claim to the land he was trying to take arless loveless is taking the land just because he can to be fair that is the american way also if i heard him correctly the only thing he's giving the native americans is manhattan which makes me wonder why they're helping him in the first place they probably have a legitimate claim to most of the land and all they're getting is about 33 square miles but again that is the american way we suck and how does he plan to convince president grant to surrender the land to him remember how those spiders kept showing up well brace yourself loveless has built a giant mechanical spider a giant mechanical spider i've heard of steampunk but this is steam bunk believe it or not they actually put the giant mechanical spider in the trailer they were proud of this they thought this would help sell tickets to the movie now if i'm being honest the cgi effects actually haven't aged as badly as i would have thought the problem is the size of the spider relative to its surroundings is somewhat inconsistent it's either the size of a large house or a small town also it is the cheesiest thing i mean why a spider they never do explain his obsession with spiders it's weird and to think smith declined to do the matrix because he thought the effects were too ambitious but he did agree to this well hindsight is 20 20. anyway west and gordon infiltrate the spider of indeterminate size by oh dear god why one terrible woman disguise wasn't enough they needed two and again everyone is fooled by this terrible disguise this really is a bugs bunny cartoon anyway blah blah blah the bad guys are defeated the united states is saved and west and gordon become charter members of the secret service an organization designed specifically to protect the president except that was not the original purpose of the secret service but this movie hasn't demonstrated any actual knowledge of history so far why start now oh and remember how rita's father was one of the scientists kidnapped by loveless turns out the scientist wasn't actually her father it was her husband you could have told us that from the beginning rita yeah she could have there was literally no reason not to this movie is stupid i do appreciate how they at least try to incorporate some elements from the tv show like the train and gordon's penchant for gadgets and disguises but the story was ridiculous kenneth branagh's facial hair was ridiculous salma heck's acting was well below what she's capable of probably because the movie didn't give her anything to work with and it commits the greatest sin of any comedy it's not funny smith and klein were trying bless him and i maintained they could have pulled it off had they been given a better script but i didn't laugh once while watching this movie and that's just taking the movie on its own merits when you compare it with the tv show on which it's based it's even worse i'm not saying the show was perfect it had its own issues like i said product of its time but it was far more entertaining than this it had better stories better villains the heroes had better chemistry the movie resembles the show in name only as previously stated robert conrad was not a fan of the movie and actually showed up at the razzie ceremony to accept the movie's awards he also did not approve of the casting of will smith though he made it clear he had no problem with an african-american playing james west he just didn't think a comedic actor like smith was right for the part he would have preferred in his own words someone with the body of wesley snipes and the head of denzel washington personally i'd go with idris elba a lot of people wanted him to be the next james bond why not james bond on horseback he could totally pull that off so the movie was crap but let's get to the million dollar question was it really the worst picture of the year let's look at the other nominees we have big daddy which was really just an average adam sandler film not great but not terrible we have the haunting which was crap but wasn't a chore to sit through we have the phantom menace which had its problems of course but honestly i can't bring myself to hate it and finally the blair witch project which i maintain is actually a good movie and i will die on that hill so compared to the rest of the nominees wild wild west seems like the easy choice however there are other movies that came out in 1999 that the razzies seemingly overlooked movies that you could argue deserved at least a nomination if not an outright win you had end of days which had little going for it apart from some cool explosions you had baby geniuses which wouldn't appeal to anyone above the age of the cast you had wing commander which didn't get a single razzy nomination despite being a crappy video game adaptation how the hell did they overlook wing commander did they think it would be too obvious so what was the real worst picture of 1999 well i'll tell you the underground comedy movie i wouldn't be surprised if many of you had never heard of this one until recently i had forgotten it existed myself the underground comedy movie got a limited release in 1999 and when i say limited i mean it reportedly played in one theater for one day and made less than 900 it was written and directed by and starred vince offer you know the shamwow guy see before mr offer became famous for chilling away for various gadgets he took a stab at being a filmmaker this was a mistake the underground comedy movie is a sketch movie similar to kentucky fried movie or and now for something completely different some of the sketches were rehashed from the underground comedy show a public access tv show offer and his buddies did in 1988. the movie is even dedicated to the show's die hard fans and i'm sure both of them were thrilled the movie initially did not get widespread distribution or a home video release as offer couldn't afford it likely due to some ill-advised lawsuits he actually sued the farrelly brothers claiming he had given them an advanced copy of the film and they plagiarized 14 scenes for their something about mary the fair release claimed they had never even heard of mr offer or his shitty movie and the case was dismissed with prejudice and that does not surprise me at all i went back and re-watched there's something about mary and there is one scene not even a scene it's a fraction of a scene it's a shot basically that's kinda sorta maybe possibly in a certain light bears a slight passing resemblance to a bit from the underground comedy movie barely and i am not a lawyer i don't even play one on tv but it seems to me like there is not nearly enough similarity to warrant a plagiarism case and even so that's just one scene i honestly could not tell you how offer came up with 14. but after selling some vegetable shoppers at swap meets he eventually got enough money for a dvd release and sold it exclusively on late night infomercials in 2002. ah yes the infomercials it's all coming back to me now basically all it did was talk about how offensive it was the most offensive movie ever made guaranteed to offend was the tagline i can't speak for anyone else but personally the only joke i find offensive is one that is not funny so yeah it is the most offensive movie ever made the biggest problem is it doesn't really have much in the way of actual jokes despite being a so-called comedy the closest they come as a batman parody where the superhero is a baseball player batman get it but otherwise it's just a bunch of half-baked half-finished and half-assed ideas ironically the movie begins with the definition of satire and then spends the next 90 minutes proving it doesn't actually understand satire there's another superhero spoof called the adventures of dick man which i probably can't show you there's two guys reviewing porno movies which i definitely can't show you there's a talk show where some guy interviews a kkk member but instead of interviewing him he just straight up murders him that one's not so bad and there's whatever this is i couldn't even begin to describe this it defies description i have no idea what's going on in that sketch and i don't think they do either somehow the movie features special appearances by gina lee nolan who does the famous marilyn monroe pose for no reason slash who was either a really good actor or was legitimately wasted i honestly can't tell and michael clark duncan as a gay virgin some guy keeps trying to get in his pants but he ain't having it because he's saving himself for the right man that's it that is the entire bit i hardly know what to say about this i mean it's not homophobic or anything it's just what's the joke and there's also an appearance by statutory rapist joey buttafuco which just reeks of desperation it's controversy purely for the sake of it and it's pathetic hey vince you're trying too hard this was an absolute chore to sit through it's just unfunny sketch after unfunny sketch for about an hour and a half and they had to resort to some downright lazy tactics to even get the runtime to feature length some of the sketches repeat and i don't mean they put the same characters in different situations no no i mean they used alternate takes of the exact same sketch the gay virgin thing they do that three times and then the third one they actually corpse at the end and they kept it in the movie but maybe i shouldn't complain too much about that because it is the only time i actually laughed i don't like white guys i don't your hair smells i'm half puerto rican are you it is not at all lost on me that the one scene i laughed at is the one that is clearly improvised so yeah this isn't even a contest the underground comedy movie is hands down the worst movie of 1999. wild wild west was bad and terribly unfunny but vince offers 90 minutes of [ __ ] is an assault on the very concept of comedy it's horrible but i'm not going to complain too much about the razzies not nominating this one like i said it only played in one theater for one day so it was easy to miss if you haven't seen it good keep it that way continue to live your life in blissful ignorance you lucky bastard if you haven't seen wild wild west you're not missing much there either at least some actual effort went into that one but it's still not worth your time but by all means check out the tv show if you haven't seen it just be aware you know product of his time next time we're gonna do something a little different for the holidays although it will still be worst picture adjacent until then i am the smeg head and i really hope vince offers sticks to infomercials [Music] [Music] what's the worst

Channel: Cinematic Excrement

Views: 77,221

Keywords: cinematic, excrement, smeghead, movie, review, wild wild west, will smith, kevin kline, salma hayek

Id: o_ccxkTJ8a4

Length: 30min 22sec (1822 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020