After establishing his own animation empire with ‘Family Guy’,
which continues to run after surviving not one but two cancellations, ‘American
Dad!’, and ‘The Cleveland Show’, Seth MacFarlane transitioned into film with
his directorial debut, ‘Ted’, and the film was a pretty big hit when it
released in June 2012. Not only did it receive generally solid reviews from
critics, but it also ended up becoming the highest grossing original comedy of
all time with nearly $550 million worldwide at the box office. A few months
later, MacFarlane was selected to host the 85th Academy Awards and
while he, as usual, attracted a lot of controversy due to his trademark style
of humor, I was one of those who thought that he did a really good job and felt
that his turn as host was a breath of fresh air for the annual awards ceremony.
But now he’s back with his next directorial effort, ‘A Million Ways to Die in
the West’, and this time instead of just portraying a motion capture character
as he did in ‘Ted’, he makes his live-action debut in the lead role. So how
does this film hold up? Well, ultimately I can’t say that it was as good as ‘Ted’
for a few glaring reasons but overall it still provided a decent amount of
laughs though how it will fare with audiences could ultimately depend on
whether or not you’re a fan of MacFarlane’s work.
The film centers on Albert Stark (Seth MacFarlane), a
cowardly sheep farmer in Arizona who constantly complains about how awful the
Wild West in 1882 is, and that’s mostly because there are multiple ways (‘a
million’ to be specific) to die there; disease, outlaws, animals, the doctor,
etc. His lack of courage ends up resulting in him losing his girlfriend Louise
(Amanda Seyfried) to the town’s moustache shop owner Foy (Neil Patrick Harris)
after he withdraws from a duel. Albert then decides to leave for San Francisco,
but ends up staying when a mysterious woman named Anna (Charlize Theron) moves
into town. As she and Albert start to become friends, he starts to gain a bit
more confidence as he attempts to win back the heart of Louise. But soon he
finds himself having to stand his ground not against Foy, but against Anna’s
husband, the notorious outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), when he arrives
in town seeking revenge on Stark after he started to develop a relationship
with Anna. In order to deal with this, Anna helps Albert by teaching him how to
shoot better so that Albert can stand a chance against the most vicious gunslinger
in the territory.
This film’s humor is exactly what you would expect from MacFarlane
given his line of work; fairly crass and juvenile. If you’re someone who likes
that kind of humor, you’ll probably enjoy this movie and overall there are a
solid amount of funny moments in this film. I’ve heard some people say that the
best stuff is in the trailer and for the most part they’re fairly right but
there were still a few good funny moments peppered in here and there that weren’t
featured in the trailers. However, the big problem here is that there are a few
instances where there’s no humor at all. And you know some comedies do have
moments where the humor doesn’t fly well but that’s not the case here because there
are a few instances where nothing funny is happening for a good 10 to 15
minutes. A lot of critics have said that this film is ‘overlong’, and I have to
say that I do agree with that. This film may only be about 10 minutes longer
than ‘Ted’, but that film’s humor was much more consistent and ultimately had enough
material to justify its runtime. This film, sadly, doesn’t have enough material
to be nearly two hours long. In fact, the whole plot involving Liam Neeson’s
character… is actually more or less just the subplot for the third act.
Seriously, most of the movie’s buildup revolves around a duel between Albert
and Foy, not with Albert and Clinch as the trailers are indicating.
But still, this film does benefit from a pretty solid cast
even if they don’t always have enough good material to work with. In his first
major live-action leading role, MacFarlane does a pretty good job and his
chemistry with Theron, who’s really good here as well, is also really good. It
always helps in a movie like this when the chemistry between the two leads is
really good though remember what I said about those instances that had a severe
lack of humor? That’s because those scenes are mainly focused on developing the
relationship between the two and though it really is a nice little romance that
these two develop, this film sort of focuses on that relationship a bit too
much. All of the other major members of the cast, including Seyfried, Harris,
Giovanni Ribisi, who plays Albert’s best friend Edward, and Sarah Silverman,
who plays Edward’s fiancé Ruth, have their own moments to shine here as well.
Unfortunately though, Liam Neeson doesn’t get much to do here; his character is
pretty one-note, which is a shame after his hilarious turn as Bad Cop/Good Cop
in ‘The LEGO Movie’. As for the multiple cameos in this movie (another thing
you can expect from a MacFarlane production), there a few really noteworthy
cameos here that produce some quality laughs though one cameo unfortunately had
to be involved in probably the weakest post-credits scene ever. It’s a fairly
brief scene and the cameo itself was pretty cool but quite frankly it just isn’t
worth it after waiting through the entire credits.
I don’t think ‘A Million Ways to Die in the West’ is that
bad; I feel that it’s better than a lot of comedies that are coming out these
days and at the end of the day there are a good decent amount of laughs to be
had here. However, as far as MacFarlane’s directorial efforts go, ‘Ted’ was the
funnier film. This film just doesn’t have enough material to justify a near
two-hour runtime. There are at least two or three instances where no humor is occurring
for at least 10-15 minutes and while those scenes are setting up a nice little
romance between MacFarlane and Theron’s characters, that romance is focused on
just a bit too much. Still, the cast is pretty game for the material, there are
a few really fun cameos here, and overall if you’re a fan of MacFarlane’s work
you’ll probably like this. If you’re not a fan, well, obviously you’re probably
not going to like this film. But really, if you haven’t seen ‘Neighbors’ yet, I’d
recommend that film over this one because at the end of the day that is still
the best comedy of this year so far. Again, I don’t think this film was that
bad, but it’s a rather disappointing follow-up to ‘Ted’ and it could have been
a lot funnier.
Rating: 3/5
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