Just as I had suspected since the first time that I saw Will and Kevin go over the edge of that cliff on a winged bicycle in the trailer, I must now award Wild Wild West with the coveted:

Of course. You can't honestly expect me to say that Wild Wild West was better than Rushmore. Still, I thought it deserved something.

Once again, I must issue the Haven't Been There, Haven't Done That Disclaimer on the nine-hundredth movie this year to be based on an old TV show that I've never seen.

That being said, I thought this movie ruled. It's got Will Smith, it's got Kevin Kline, and just in case you've been living in a box, it has an eighty foot tall mechanical spider.

Did anyone else think that it was peculiar that the big secret weapon that Dr. Loveless was working on was featured in ninety percent of the trailer?

They go and try to introduce this little steam powered tank in the beginning of the film as if it is the secret weapon and there's not a single person in the audience who's not thinking "So, is that a part of the gigantic spider from the trailer, or what?"

And speaking of steam powered, do you suppose anybody in the props department of this movie has ever actually seen a steam engine?

"Well gee Frank, as far as I can tell anything with a smokestack with spade-shaped pointymathings on the top and a couple of them little whirlymajigs on the sides must be steam powered!"

I've been to Travel Town. I've seen the steam engines on the trains from this time period. They're the size of my living room.

You can't have a steam powered megaphone.

Then again, I suppose if you can have a steam powered spider the size of a McDonalds Playplace that shoots fireballs out of its mouth, then what the hell, right? Go to town. Why not have a steam powered laser pointer? Anything goes.

Even the official web page boasts "Welcome to the Wild Wild West web site, a solid construction powered by the latest in steam technology!"

Honestly.

Speaking of which, on a semi-related note, there's something that always pissed me off about Back to the Future III. Okay, so it's 1985 and Doc Brown builds a time machine. The only fuel powerful enough to generate the 1.21 jigawatts of electricity needed to power the flux capacitor is plutonium.

Now keep in mind, even with fabulous Japanese engineered circuitry and a tiny streamlined DeLorean, specially chosen for its stainless steel body which would evenly distribute the temporal flux over the surface of the vehicle, it still takes plutonium to break the time barrier.

Then in BTTF III suddenly, using nothing but ornate wrought-iron Jules Verney 1885 mechanical dojobbies, the good Doctor can make a time machine out of an entire freakin' train that runs on nothing but STEAM!

No sir. I don't buy it.

Even taking into account Doc Brown's advanced experience in temporal physics at this point in the trilogy, I still don't believe that it takes plutonium to get a DeLorean through time, but using nothing but heated water you can pop a locomotive the size of a diner through the fourth dimension.

And speaking of locomotives, how about that Wanderer train, huh? This is what The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. would have looked like if it had been given this kind of budget. What a cool train. That's going to make a lot of kids happy this Christmas morning.

And that flying Nitruscycle. I wonder why Gordon decided to give this particular invention a "simple name." Could it be so that it could fit nicely on a plastic windowed box at Toys R Us?

Can you imagine how pissed marketing would have been having to put "Gravity Repellant Da-Vinci-Inspired Aviatory Velocipede does not include Extreme Ninja Kick Artemus Gordon action figure" in the small print? Hoo-boy.

But perhaps the biggest mystery of all is, of course, just what in the name of Robert Conrad is Kenneth Branagh doing in a movie this stupid? Remember Hamlet? Henry V? Much Ado About Nothing? Is it just me, or does this seem a wildly inconsistent career move? From the melancholy prince of Denmark to a legless evil "genius" who honestly thinks he can take over the entire United States with a single mechanical spider.

And speaking of legless and spiders, oooh, oooh, did you get the irony?! The man with no legs is obsessed with SPIDERS! Get it? He has NO legs, and spiders have EIGHT legs! Get it?

Anyhoo, it's a stupid movie. It really is. I loved it. I'm going to see it again.