Million Ways to Die in the West, A (2014) [Blu-ray]
Comedy | Western

This hilarious comedy from Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy and Ted, is filled with witty one-liners and an all-star cast. When Albert (MacFarlane) loses his girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried) to his moustached nemesis (Neil Patrick Harris), a mysterious and beautiful woman (Charlize Theron) rides into town and turns his luck around. But when her notorious outlaw husband (Liam Neeson) arrives seeking revenge, Albert must put his newfound courage to the test. Also starring the outrageous Giovanni Ribisi and Sarah Silverman.

Storyline: Set in 1882 in the American west, Albert is a lowly farmer with a nice girlfriend. But when she leaves him for the more successful and handsome owner of a moustachery store, Albert returns to his lonely daily life of trying to avoid death. Then the mysterious Anna rides into town and captures Albert's interest and heart, but with her deadly husband in tow, Albert is going to have to become the western gun-slinging hero he never was. It won't be easy because there are a million ways to die in the west. Written by Anne Campbell

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, September 26, 2014 -- What would be the first adjective you'd use to describe Seth MacFarlane? Hilarious? Hackneyed? Genius? Juvenile? MacFarlane is an unusually eclectic creative force who seems to delight equally in the sorts of boorish behaviors frequently on display in his long running animated series Family Guy while also being simultaneously intrigued by the wonders of the universe as revealed in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a series he helped to guide back onto the airwaves. And perhaps for that reason alone, no single adjective may be able to adequately capture the breadth of MacFarlane's interests and approaches. That said, whatever side of the line between enjoyable prankster and annoying jerk you come down on will probably determine whether or not you feel MacFarlane's latest feature film A Million Ways to Die in the West, hits the bullseye or simply is a stray bullet ricocheting off of John Fordian landscapes. Like most MacFarlane outings, A Million Ways to Die in the West is a grabbag of ideas and comedic approaches, and there's absolutely no denying that some of the gags land, producing giggles if not outright guffaws. But in that grabbag are just as many lame moments, with the result being that MacFarlane's kind of weird combination of snark and innocence only fitfully manages to deliver the Wild West goods.

Before even one lame or effective gag can traipse through the frame, MacFarlane announces he's going to at least refer visually to the great western directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks with some gorgeous deep focus shots of incredible American vistas stretching as far as the eye can see. In fact A Million Ways to Die in the West is easily MacFarlane's most scenic film, filled with grand crane shots establishing various locales and providing an epic sweep that is (probably intentionally) comically at odds with the faltering, stumbling demeanor of the film's hero, sheep farmer Albert Stark (Seth MacFarlane). The film begins with one of the hoariest tropes in the annals of the western, the high noon showdown on Main Street, with Albert literally tripping into the scene, evidently late to what may very well be his own execution.

That sets up one of the central comedic tenets of A Million Ways to Die in the West, where a standard genre convention will get tweaked by a considerably contemporary delivery. While everyone else in this scene seems at least more or less at home in their Old West countenances, MacFarlane's Albert is a distinctly modern creature, full of psychobabble and other ironic sensibilities as he attempts to talk himself out of a gun battle he already knows he has no chance of winning. Later, other characters like female bandit and eventual love interest Anna Barnes-Leatherwood (Charlize Theron) will join Albert in repeated droppings of the F-bomb and other au courant language that provides much of the film's verbal humor. It's the tension between setting and depiction that repeatedly forms the basis for much of MacFarlane's comedy throughout the film, and as with most attempts of this ilk, it leads to both spotty and, ultimately, diminishing returns.

Albert's shirking from the gunfight at the head of the film and Theron's Anna turn out to be the two major motivators of A Million Ways to Die in the West's bifurcated plot. Albert has been seeing Louise (Amanda Seyfried), but Louise is status conscious and doesn't want to be seen with a man thought to be a coward. She soon takes up with the foppish Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), a local entrepreneur who runs a mustache shop (he sports a rather villainous one himself).

Anna enters the picture soon thereafter, though originally not in Old Stump. She is in fact the wife of vicious bad guy Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), and their introduction comes courtesy of a highway robbery where they take an old prospector's gold. Clinch has bigger plans, though, and he sends Anna and one of his henchmen to Old Stump to hang out until the appointed time. When Anna arrives in the dusty town, circumstances of course pull her into contact with Albert, and when Albert and Anna run into Louise and Foy at the local fair, things go from bad to worse until Albert finds himself challenged to another gunfight—this time by Foy.

In the meantime, Anna's skill with firearms has been revealed (and is in fact one of the reasons Albert now finds himself challenged by Foy), so she takes her neurotic would be boyfriend under her wing and attempts to teach him to shoot. MacFarlane follows a fairly predicable story arc here, letting the romantic sparks start to kindle between Anna and Albert while reserving the reappearance of Clinch in the third act to cause a wrinkle or two and keep the lovers apart, if only for a little while.

A Million Ways to Die in the West has some effective bits, but much of the verbal humor comes from the deliberate clash of a contemporary patois colliding with Old West clichés. MacFarlane is of course not above (repeatedly) using potty humor (a big gag toward the end of the film has to do with diarrhea—hilarious) and sexual situations (Sarah Silverman portrays a local "working girl" involved with a nebbish played by Giovanni Ribisi). MacFarlane's own peculiar brand of deadpan works best in bits like the big SFX laden hallucination Albert experiences while on a "Vision Quest" with the local Native Americans. At other times, he seems to be attempting to channel a neo- modern version of Woody Allen, a tic filled neurotic not quite able to cope with the "modern" world, but ending up with the impossibly gorgeous girlfriend anyway.

That turns out to be a somewhat risky gambit for a performer who has a certain likably smarmy element to his personality, something that's distinctly different from Allen's own patented brand of fumfering, stammering panic. Still, MacFarlane has an undeniable charm that fuels a lot of the film's momentum, and he seems to genuinely charm (and crack up) Theron, looking here like an updated version of Sharon Stone in The Quick and the Dead. The supporting cast (which frankly includes Neeson) is great, and MacFarlane engages in several pieces of stunt casting and blink or you'll miss them cameos.

There's a great moment toward the end of A Million Ways to Die in the West where MacFarlane's Albert is speaking to Native Americans in their own language. They can't understand how a white "asshole" (as they term the settlers) can speak their language, to which Albert replies, "I'm a nerd asshole." That may indeed be a fairly accurate description of MacFarlane himself, and how much tolerance individuals have for a hugely disparate array of humor, some relatively smart, some inescapably stupid, some snarkily self-aware, some dumbed down and almost naive sounding, will determine how much actual laughter will result from watching the film. A Million Ways to Die in the West may not be consistent, but it's relentless, and that may actually win the war of comedic attrition. Technical merits here are very strong, and A Million Ways to Die in the West comes Recommended.

[CSW] -2.2- Raunchy parody of Western with lot of farts, crude sexual references, bizarre violence, use of drugs and politically incorrect jokes filmed in the beautiful scenery of Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley. I was a bit disappointed with the hero looking like a nice guy from the future. You cannot even count how many lowbrow flatulence, fecal and sex jokes there are, and let me tell you, they are not that worthwhile. That's not to say there isn't some funny stuff here, just not enough for a TV show let alone a feature length movie. The overuse of cheap sexual and potty jokes was just too juvenile to be all that funny. It is rated R so there may be some 18 to 20 year olds that might really get off on this type of humor but for more mature audiences it falls kind of flat.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now.



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