Film Review- "A Million Ways To Die In The West"

A Million Ways To Die In The West
Directed By Seth MacFarlane
Starring Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Liam Neeson, and Neil Patrick Harris

I guess you could say in the debate of wether to like or dislike Seth MacFarlane, I lean more towards like. I lost interest in Family Guy a long time ago, although I do enjoy the older episodes. Ted is one of my favorite films, I thought his album "Music Is Better Than Words" was good, and I know I'm in the minority when I say I thought he was good hosting the Oscars.

However, I know that MacFarlane can do as much bad as he does good. I'm looking at you The Cleveland Show, American Dad, and short-lived Fox sitcoms Dads and The Winner. After the success of Ted, combined with my love for Blazing Saddles (The original western-comedy), I had high hopes for his next feature film, A Million Ways To Die In The West.

It goes without being said, but A Million Ways is no Blazing Saddles.

The film centers around Albert (MacFarlane), a sheep farmer in the old west. After chickening out on a gunfight, his girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried) leaves him for mustache aficionado Foy (Harris). Shortly afterwards, the wife of an outlaw (Theron) comes to town. She takes a shine to Albert, decides to teach him how to shoot, and hopefully win his girl back. Of course they start to fall for one another, which of course is a problem, seeing is how Anna's husband, outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Neeson), is on his way to town.

It's a unique enough story for the western setting, but what about the comedy? Where Ted was  charming, outrageous and crude, A Million Ways is outrageous and crude, sans charm. A lot of the jokes seem like they were scrapped from an episode of Family Guy. There is plenty to laugh at, but I found throughout the film I was chuckling and smiling to myself, more than laughing out loud.

At some points, MacFarlane is definitely at his crudest. I never thought I'd see a Neil Patrick Harris take a dump in a hat, or a sheep's penis in a film, but there it is. That's not a spoiler by the way, no, that's a warning. Speaking of spoilers, while one great cameo was given away in the trailers, there a few more that are just fantastic.

This is an impressive cast as you can probably tell. The big problem is they aren't really given the chance to exercise their funny bones. Most of the comedy is given to MacFarlane, who as a leading man, is just okay. Charlize Theron get some laughs. Sarah Silverman and Giovanni Ribisi get their fair share of the comedy, but others like Neil Patrick Harris, Liam Neeson, and Amanda Seyfried are criminally underused.

A Million Ways To Die In The West is not Seth MacFarlane's best, but it's also not his worst. The good outweighs the bad, and you'll definitely laugh. But the cast isn't giving the performance you'd hope they would, and the script isn't as well polished as Ted was. If you see it once, that's probably enough. If you don't see it all, no big deal.