THE WORST MOVIES EVER MADE
20 WILD WILD WEST 1999
After Men In Black’s out-of-this-world success, many will have wished they could neuralyze the memory of its spiritual successor Wild Wild West, not least Will Smith and returning director Barry Sonnenfeld. Loosely adapted from the ‘60s series of the same name and given a blockbuster-friendly steampunk update, Smith stars as Jim West, desperado, rough rider (no you don’t want nada), who teams up with US Marshal Artemus Gordon (Kevin Kline) to investigate confederate madman Arliss Loveless (a pantomime Kenneth Branagh) and his magnificent mechanical contraptions.
The most expensive film ever made at the time of release, Wild Wild West had spectacle to spare, but all the giant steam-powered spiders in the West couldn’t compensate for a paper-thin plot and a near-total absence of laughs in this so-called action ‘comedy’. A cross-dressing running gag might generously be labelled ‘of its time’, and Salma Hayek plays a walking corset, but the film’s critical failing is its central double act. Leaning heavily on Smith’s star-wattage, Kline is left with scraps, seemingly cast in dual roles (he also plays President Ulysses S. Grant) to compensate.
REDEEMING FACTOR Smith’s eponymous theme song, featuring thong aficionado Sisqó, remains a banger.
19 THE WICKER MAN 2006
The bee’s knees this ain’t, as Neil LaBute ditches the Christianity vs Paganism crux of Robin Hardy’s soul-shattering 1973 original and instead pitches a wide-eyed Nic Cage on some sort of Fathers For Justice kamikaze mission as he barrels into a matriarchal society of organic honey ranchers.
Cage’s highway patrolman Malus (so named because it’s half ‘male’, half ‘phallus’ – we’re serious) is summoned to Summersisle, off the coast of Washington State, by his former fiancée (Kate Beahan) to search for her missing daughter. He soon comes to suspect she’s been squirrelled away, ready to be sacrificed
