Just another megabudgeted plunder of an innocent inoffensive little TV series. The series, dating from the late Sixties when spy spoofs and Westerns were both thick on the ground, seemed a sensible and even slightly ingenious hybrid. The movie, on the other hand, comes in the midst of a long Western dry spell, and in the post-Austin Powers period of decadence in spy spoofs. The timing, in short, stinks. The major contribution of the movie, not counting the eighty-foot Erector Set tarantula and assorted other gadgets, which are not worth counting, is to roll back the time-line to before Jim West and Artemus Gordon had met, and then to chronicle their first collaboration, when they were an Army Intelligence officer and U.S. Marshal respectively, and were commanded against their personal preferences to work together as a team, in between intrasquad barbs and needles. This contribution adds nothing but triteness and tedium. Making one of them black (Will Smith) and the other white (Kevin Kline) adds only more of the same: think Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in 48 Hours and Another 48 Hours. Making the black one the avenging son of Southern slaves who were experimentally exterminated by the comic-strip villain (Kenneth Branagh) adds only a sour note. With Salma Hayek and Ted Levine; directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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