Yahsi Bati

For most cases, quite poor art work is seen in Turkish movies. But Cem Yilmaz and his team are doing a great job by designing environment with all its details. Well written scenario and lively characters are making this movie as one of landmarks of early Turkish cinema history.

When I posted a review of A.R.O.G. a couple years ago I wrote that "Cem Yilmaz is financing his future good movie with a bad one". Judging by the pattern he followed until that day, I hoped that his next movie would a good one such as "Hokkabaz" or "Hersey Cok Güzel Olacak"... I was wrong.

Despite the wonderful visual effects, impeccable decor and costume, electrifying music, and so many other technical achievements worthy of praise, the movie is ultimately a bad one. The screenplay is too long and inflated with so many witless jokes. It is formulaic, repetitive and unoriginal. It is basically G.O.R.A. (or A.R.O.G.) in the wild west. Turkish comedy should outgrow fart-jokes, accent-abuse and overused unsubtle cross-culture references.

Even the decor has problems, since there is a nylon American flag in Sheriff Lloyd's office, and poker is played with plastic chips. After all that attention to detail, stuff like that ruins everything.

The fact that the movie is a lengthy commercial for a cola drink is also disturbing.

One clever thing Cem Yilmaz did with the script is to make it a story told by a shifty-eyed antique dealer. That saves him from a whole lot of criticism. Maybe if he had hired a professional screenplay doctor from Hollywood instead of a visual effects artist, the movie would be a much better one.

Spending large amounts of money is not enough for a good movie. But in a country like Turkey where capital is really rare Cem Yilmaz was lucky. He is a great comedian, and has proved himself as a great entertainer. Thus it was not difficult for him to secure the investment for this big project. That's why we were filled with expectations more than the usual. At the end it was a big disappointment; the script was not strong. The story was weak and so were the jokes. I am sure the next movie of Cem Yilmaz will be full of lessons learned from this movie. We, the Turkish audience, are expecting the next big hit from him. Our expectations are justified when we think about his talent.

Since Cem Yilmaz's movies are becoming worse and worse every time (i.e. A.R.O.G), my expectations were really low on this movie. On some of the aspects, these were met. For starters, the screenplay is really dull, based on all the Turkish cliché jokes about Wild West. The jokes are not funny at all and the level of them are too low. And as in most of the movies of Cem Yilmaz, the scenario is not coherent, it's like jokes about Wild West in a stand-up comedy, which have been cast in a movie and glued together. The worst thing is that there is an inconsistency in the movie; it's supposed to be Ottoman Turks in Wild West but all the lead characters (including the Americans) are acting as if they are Turkish such as the Sheriff of Cannonball and his family. Still, the art directors has done a high toned job - they must have had worked a lot on the storyboard, there are real nice scenes through the movie - I have to say the costumes are quite good, too. In conclusion, it turns out to be a movie not to waste time on, maybe to be watched on a Sunday afternoon on TV while doing some other stuff.

Having to wait until this feature came out on DVD was no disappointment, just be prepared to read subtitles - which is OK with me.

Being quite familiar with some of the idiosyncrasies of Turkish life from a foreigners view, I had a blast watching this collaborative production mix some of the finer points of the old west with the comedic lifestyle of a few Ottoman Turks making their first diplomatic trek to the Wild West.

As always, I enjoy the humor of Cem Yilmaz, but in order to really enjoy this film, one has to be quite familiar with the 'finer points' of living amongst our Turkish brethren – it's the little things that mean a lot.

'Chuck!' You know what I mean...