A Million Ways to Die in the West (Seth MacFarlane)

[TGM]

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST

Director: Seth MacFarlane

imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2557490/?ref_=nv_sr_1)

http://medialexiconedu.com/assets/promotion/1400480652_promotion.jpg

[TGM]

Sooooooooooooooo much better than Ted.

[Dukefrukem]

This movie has both the worst and best cameos I've seen in a while.

[TGM]

This movie has both the worst and best cameos I've seen in a while.

Which and which?

[Dukefrukem]

Which and which?

Ryan Reynolds and Jamie Foxx, respectively.

[TGM]

Ryan Reynolds and Jamie Foxx, respectively.

Heh, I actually got a huge kick out of both of those. :P

[Dukefrukem]

Heh, I actually got a huge kick out of both of those. :P

The former was so improperly used. I didn't get it.

[TGM]

The former was so improperly used. I didn't get it.
It was a callback to his walk-on/walk-off cameo in Ted. And since that also happened to be my favorite part of that entire movie, I especially got a kick out of it here.

I assume it'll likely become a recurring gag throughout MacFarlane's future flicks as well.

[Dukefrukem]

Oh yehhhhh. I forgot about that.

[eternity]

This movie feels like its pissed that it has to be a comedy.

[Dukefrukem]

Who's got a bigger fascination with poop? Seth? The South Park guys? Or Howard Stern?

Also, best original song:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jPjjZe9HKQ

[Gittes]

This movie feels like its pissed that it has to be a comedy.

How so? Just curious.

[Henry Gale]

How so? Just curious.

Haven't seen it, but going by Ted and a couple of impressions reviews have given me for this, I'm going to assume MacFarlane's sentimentality and overestimating of the weight of his love story and other relationships completely overtake the movie's final act, and jibe with the sardonic and brash two-thirds before it.

Seth, you cannot do sincerity. You've made a whole career honing how to be offensively boundary-pushing and smug in a way that strikes a chord with audiences, and building previous projects to fit that, why do you think that people suddenly want to see your movies play as if they strive to be Zucker/Abrahams or Mel Brooks spiritual descendants that suddenly flip the switch to resolve themselves like bad romantic comedies?

[Dukefrukem]

Haven't seen it, but going by Ted and a couple of impressions reviews have given me for this, I'm going to assume MacFarlane's sentimentality and overestimating of the weight of his love story and other relationships completely overtake the movie's final act, and just gibe with the sardonic and brash two thirds before it.

Seth, you cannot do sincerity. You'd made a whole career honing just how to be ironic and smug to striking a chord with audiences, and building projects to fit that, why do you think that people want to see movies that play like strive to be Zucker/Abrahams or Mel Brooks spiritual descendants that suddenly flip the switch to resolve themselves like bad romantic comedies?

You know what this post reminds me of, SCRUBS. There were a ton of episodes that follow this exact formula, and towards the end actually boil down to either a) the moral of the episode or b) the sincerity that you mentioned above. Where did the directors of those episodes go? Just thinking out loud.

[eternity]

Much of the humor beyond the fact that every character speaks like it's 2014 seems tacked on to what is otherwise a conventional, completely earnest Western. It seems like Seth MacFarlane wanted to make an honest Western first and foremost, but it just isn't good enough on that level to make up for the fact that there just aren't very many jokes in this movie. For the jokes that are there, very few of them are all that funny. I'm used to (and a big fan) of the rapid fire onslaught of jokes that MacFarlane's work are known for; even if most of them miss, they just keep coming. That is not the case in A Million Ways to Die in the West, and it ultimately suffers for it.

[eternity]

Haven't seen it, but going by Ted and a couple of impressions reviews have given me for this, I'm going to assume MacFarlane's sentimentality and overestimating of the weight of his love story and other relationships completely overtake the movie's final act, and just gibe with the sardonic and brash two thirds before it.

Seth, you cannot do sincerity. You'd made a whole career honing just how to be ironic and smug to striking a chord with audiences, and building projects to fit that, why do you think that people want to see movies that play like strive to be Zucker/Abrahams or Mel Brooks spiritual descendants that suddenly flip the switch to resolve themselves like bad romantic comedies?
More or less this.

[Henry Gale]

Just realizing now how unintelligible a lot of what I wrote was. But thanks, guys! :lol: (Had to edit it for future reading...)


You know what this post reminds me of, SCRUBS. There were a ton of episodes that follow this exact formula, and towards the end actually boil down to either a) the moral of the episode or b) the sincerity that you mentioned above. Where did the directors of those episodes go? Just thinking out loud.

At least that show had characters that felt generally relatable and intermittently real enough to earn your affection over time, and were set in a daily situation that warranted pulling of heartstrings now and again. It's a whole other deal when something plays as one-dimensionally and ironically as MacFarlane's stuff that then decides to suddenly do the same, expecting you to actually care about the caricatures involved.

[Sxottlan]

I think this was even less funny than Ted and I wasn't all that crazy about that film either. The trailer again had all the laughs and incorrectly gave you impression that the film would feature a lot of hilarious slapstick deaths. No. This is more like A Dozen Ways to Die in the West. I think if the film were about 15 minutes shorter, it could have been better.

I agree with the statements above. I don't know why MacFarlane tries to go all Woody Allen rom-com with his feature films. His character is such a whiny brat the entire time.

I did like the mustache song.

[Grouchy]

I agree with y'all about the sentimentality being Seth's big failure as a feature film director... but this was way better than Ted in that and every other aspect. I enjoyed it.

[Gittes]

Thanks for clarifying. Your replies reminded me of Community, which delivered a lot of poor, incongruous sentimentality.

[Henry Gale]

Wow, what the hell was this even trying to be?

Everything eternity said in this thread it sums it up to a tee. It's just a really bland western intermittently deciding it wants to force half-heartedly satirical flourishes into itself. And even then it doesn't seem all that interested with the whole "trying to make funny things happen" thing so many other comedies burden themselves with. There's scenes that go on for minutes without a single subversive gesture, gag or even a strikingly original bit of dialogue worth remembering, let alone laughing at in the moment.

It's not a bulletproof test, but you think of any great genre send-ups and consider how successful they would still be as movies if all the irony and outright jokes were taken out of them, and in the case of say, anything Edgar Wright's done with his Cornetto Trilogy, you still have pretty great zombie, cop and apocalypse movies. And yet, the humour of those is still so deeply ingrained in the DNA of them that it's a tough thing to even dissect where one bit would end and another would begin. With A Million Ways To Die In The West, there's simply the plot points, the jokes (most of which you've probably seen, really), love interest scenes, villain scenes, Ribisi / Silverman scenes, aaand that's about it, with none of them really overlapping or intersecting in gratifying ways.

Even if the majority of Ted's jokes and attempts at sentimentality with its characters fell flat for me, at least it had a both of them in spades and found ways of tying together into something of a cohesive and original story. This feels like a first pass of MacFarlane and co. rewriting someone else's decades-old spec script, yet dusted their hands off and decided it was what the finished product should be.

It's likely I'll see a worse movie by the end of this year, but I hope I don't see one with so much inherent potential that ends up feeling as disappointingly lazy as this.

*½ / 3.4