A Million Ways to Die in the West
After doing the voice of a foul-mouthed teddy bear in his first feature film (2012’s comedy smash, “Ted”), Seth McFarlane was bound to get in front of the camera himself, and I’ll admit– I was concerned about the results. And the trailers for his Western comedy didn’t do the film any favors, although it still made one hope for something along the lines of “Blazing Saddles,” or at least “Maverick.” Well, having seen it, I can safely say to lower your expectations, although I wouldn’t listen too much to the critics on this one.
The movie stars McFarlane as Albert Stark, a sheep farmer in the sleepy Arizona town of Old Stump in 1882. Part of the problem with “Million Ways,” though also, one of it’s strengths, is how Albert seems to be a character not from the period. He seems like a modern time traveler to the era (aware of it’s pitfalls) than a real Western character, but this isn’t a “Back to the Future III,” where hindsight allows the main characters to comment on the time period; Albert is presented as, in the opening narrator’s words, “a man born in the wrong era.” It doesn’t really work for the movie if the film is to work as a Western, but McFarlane does a solid job in this tailor-made role, and he’s an entertaining protagonist as he’s dumped by Louise (Amanda Seyfried), but finds new, exciting romantic prospects with Anna (Charlize Theron), who is hiding in the town while her husband (the ruthless killer Clinch, played by Liam Neeson) goes on a mission for gold. And things get more complicated from there.
The script by McFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild has some very funny pieces of observational humor, and the cast (including Neil Patrick Harris, Sarah Silverman, Giovanni Ribisi, and others) are enjoying themselves in indulging McFarlane in his vulgar silliness. But while McFarlane and his production crew do a wonderful job in recreating the cinematic aesthetic of the Western (it’s obvious they love the genre), the film is just a little too crude, and not reverential enough, to the genre in terms of script and performance to work in the same way earlier, and better, Western comedies have. Still, I’d characterize the film less as a misfire for McFarlane, and simply just a bump in the road of his big-screen career. We’ll see what happens when “Ted 2” comes out next year.
