‘World Gone Wild’ (R)

"World Gone Wild" could be subtitled "Script Gone Bad." A futuristic western, it plunders good movies ("The Magnificent Seven," "The Wild Bunch") and bad ones ("Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome") with equal ineptitude.

It's 2087, 75 years after the Final War and 50 years since the last rainfall. Obviously we're not in Washington but in some nameless location where a hippy-dippy commune has sprung up around a water hole. Junked cars and buses are the inert wagon trains of the future and only a few books have survived, including "Iacocca" ("I understand he was a great president," someone says) and "Emily Post's Book of Etiquette."

Not to mention "The Wit and Wisdom of Charles Manson," which has inspired a neoapostolic cult headed by (get this) Adam Ant. The antmen, who dress in white and carry nasty guns under their habits, make like Huns and plunder the commune, which has been run by Bruce Dern, who ought to know better. For some reason, Ant doesn't kill Dern (or we'd be outta there that much more quickly.)

Dern it.

Instead our man heads for town to collect his wayward outlaw son (Michael Pare) and enlists a bunch of wild and crazy guys, including a cannibal who is told he can only eat the enemy. Incidentally, it's a typical postapocalypse town where water is gold -- though no one seems particularly thirsty and everyone's clothes look like they just came out of the wash.

Well, from there on it's the less-than-magnificent five versus the antmen. The villagers, weary at first, rally around the ruffians. Lust blooms in the desert. There's attack and counterattack, betrayal and redemption. It's all been done before and in almost every case, better.

"World Gone Wild" is rated R for some violence and very brief nudity.