Those of you who spend the late hours searching for videos of men shitting into hats will rejoice with A Million Ways To Die In The West. As...
Those of you who spend the late hours searching for videos of men shitting into hats will rejoice with A Million Ways To Die In The West. As will those of you who enjoy vividly accurate vagina descriptions. And that’s even before we get to the sheep penis.
To the immense credit of Seth MacFarlane, it’s a monumental task that he has taken on here yet again as he writes, directs AND stars. A Million Ways works to some degree, but with a bit too much exposition and a bit too little in the way of laughs, this misses the mark, however not by much.
MacFarlane plays Albert Stark, a cowardly sheep farmer who loses his better half (Amanda Seyfried) and ends up with the wife (Charlize Theron) of a bad ass gunslinger (Liam Neeson) where he must stop being a coward and turn into a western bad ass. Throw in a spot of Neil Patrick Harris (who is tragically underused) and a bunch of cameos and you have a comedy that tries very, very hard to make you laugh. Firstly the amount of F bombs here would put The Wolf Of Wall Street to shame. Fuck this, fuckin’ that. The F-Bomb is dropped at nearly every second word and the entire cast just seem to swear for the sake of it. And the gross out moments only seem to compliment the copious amount of F-bombs, providing little in the way of laughs and only serving as a distraction more than anything else. Don’t get me wrong, some of these moments are funny, but they are tacked on in alot of cases and, again, its blatantly obvious that they are here for the sake of it.
Seth MacFarlane is a decent actor and does a decent job here, but his clean good looks and powerful vocal chords do little in the way to convince that he actually is in the Wild West. I was half expecting him to be a time traveller to be honest. That gripe aside, the MacFarlane smile and cheekiness provides plenty of funny moments, and it’s these subtler moments that provide much of the laughs here as opposed to sheep dicks and shitting in hats. Charlize Theron plays off MacFarlane really well and is as per usual sexy, sultry and provides plenty of laughs. She genuinely looks like she had alot of fun here. The rest of the cast, including Liam Neeson (who only turned up for the pay cheque) and Sarah Silverman also do an admirable job, but its Giovannia Ribisi, who plays Silvermans long suffering other half, is superb. His innocence knows no bounds, it’s just a shame he doesn’t have a bigger part.
The one great thing about A Million Ways is the visuals. From opening credits to closing titles this is a vividly realised incarnation of the old Wild West and has some wonderful little touches and tributes to the Westerns of yesteryear. It really is beautiful. Look, this isn’t necessarily a bad movie, it just tries to hard, is about twenty minutes too long and does many things just for the sake of it. There is also a bunch of cameos that are short and sweet, however, the best one, involving a barn and a certain doctor, while a touch of brilliance, is completely destroyed by a pointless scene preceding it and it just feels like an after thought, even though on paper it’s a touch of brilliance.
If this was pared back even slightly, you would have a far tighter and funnier movie. MacFarlane does comedy brilliantly, and while it doesn’t shine through here all the time, there's worse things you could watch. And while you’ll never look at a sheep the same way again, for all its faults, A Million Ways To Die In The West has enough positives to outdo the negatives and its worth a punt. Just.
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