StrangeScaffold
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Wild Wild West (1999 film) = Finished
🕑 Added 2018-12-04 07:17:45 +0000 UTC I...kinda love Wild Wild West.Let me be absolutely clear: it is not a good movie, per se. It is an expensive one, and has some very talented actors on board, but a good movie it does not make. Instead, the reason I value Wild Wild West is because it is an absolute display of the weird sh*t the people who made it really, really like. Wild Wild West is what happens when your weird cousin opens up his laptop and shows you his favorite folders marked "Spiders," "Busty Women," and "Busty Women Wearing Spider-Themed Outfits."
Just...Wow. $170 million dedicated to pointed race and disability puns. $170 million dedicated to a new vision of the confederacy, based around a flag of a giant spider. $170 million dedicated to several, painfully long scenes of Kevin Kline and Will Smith in drag--the latter dancing for almost five minutes while Kenneth Branagh leers in his seat, racist speech entirely forgotten after this black belly dancer appears out of nowhere, just before Smith squeezes the spinning nipple tassels on his fake breasts to turn them into flamethrowers.
I just had to type that sentence.
Someone in an executive boardroom took out a giant venn diagram that said STEAMPUNK, GIANT SPIDERS, CONFEDERACY COSPLAY, DUBIOUS DOUBLE ENTENDRES, and WILL SMITH SINGLES, depicting them as a single united circle. Then, they said, "THIS is the beating heart of America. THIS is what the people want."
They were a brave, strange soul, and they were wrong.
This somehow exists.
It cost over $170 million to make.
I kinda love it.
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I produce a movie riffing show (www.downinfrontlive.com) in Chicago, and our second show was Wild Wild West. I had to watch it several times *and* learn the lyrics to the song. I developed a weird kind of love for it myself, in all its misguided doofiness. I even got to interview Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff about the movie for our aborted podcast. They loved the show it was based on as kids and were SO DISAPPOINTED in this movie.
