Awfully Good Movies: Wild Wild West (Video)

September 21st 2016, 10:19am

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Wild Wild West (1999)

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Stars: Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is riding into theaters again this weekend in Antoine Fuqua’s new remake, and we can only hope it’ll turn out better than another western remake that became one of the most infamously bad movies ever made: WILD WILD WEST, the new review of Awfully Good Movies! When director Barry Sonnenfeld and star Will Smith teamed up again after the huge success of MEN IN BLACK, adapting the 60s TV classic often described as “James Bond meets the Old West”, people thought it would be the movie to beat in the summer of 1999. But it did get beat, and hard: sweeping the Razzies, flopping at the box office, and leaving Burger King with mountains of unsold WILD WILD WEST toys and sunglasses. And with its confusing plot, awkward humor, ridiculous special effects, and criminal underuse of Salma Hayek, it more than deserved its failure. So hey, as long as the new MAGNIFICENT SEVEN doesn’t resort to a scene where Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt fondle each other’s fake titties, or have a hip-hop theme song featuring Sisqo, it should end up doing just fine.