The movie is exhausting, utterly without feeling, and pointless -- though Smith looks great in his Western outfit.

The result? A cautionary tale about boys and their toys and what happens when a star, Will Smith, and a director, Barry Sonnenfeld, are given way too much money to play with.

Wild, Wild West poses this not very pressing question: Can a comedy costing something north of $100 million hope to succeed solely on the basis of special effects, cross-dressing and a vertically challenged villain?

In the end, the only relief is that Sonnenfeld is a director who believed that movies should be short.