Wild Wild West

The gimmicky, light-hearted 1960s TV series comes to the screen as an ungainly, clanking, gooey box of eye candy, a vehicle for star Will Smith and special effects supervisor Eric Brevig. The plot, if that’s the right word, pits debonair secret agent James T. West (Smith) and his sidekick Artemus Gordon (Kevin Kline) against a criminal mastermind (Kenneth Branagh) out to depose President Ulysses S. Grant (also played by Kline). The credits are more interesting than the film: six writers (two for story, four for script) and no less than 11 producers (including five executive, one associate, one co-producer and two visual effects producers). With that many fingerprints, things can’t help getting pretty smudged. Director Barry Sonnenfeld loses control early on, and never regains it.