A Million Ways to Die in the West is Seth Macfarlane’s second live-action movie, where he stars as a an uncourageous sheep farmer, who gets dumped by his girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried) for another man (Neil Patrick Harris) and befriends a beautiful stranger (Charlize Theron) who is married to a cruel outlaw (Liam Neeson). It being a Seth Macfarlane movie, be prepared for random jokes you can easily miss if you blink, and a lot of humor that involves body functions.
Now a lot of reviewers out there claim to be big-time Family Guy fans, yet they found all the dick and fart jokes to be a bit much. Apparently they aren’t as big of Family Guy fans as they claim, given that Family Guy has a couple dick and fart jokes in each episode. Maybe the fact that it is a cartoon makes it easier to accept. They are also comparing this flick with the parody Albert Brooks classic, Blazing Saddles. People should really stop doing that, because I don’t think Macfarlane was going for his movie being the next Blazing Saddles. I think it’s just the fact that they are both funny Westerns, which is really the only similarities these two have.
I actually rather enjoyed A Million Ways to Die in the West, because I wasn’t expecting this comedic masterpiece of a flick that I guess others were. It was complete Macfarlane humor throughout, that reminded me of the Family Guy Star Wars episodes. It’s not your traditional parody movie where the big joke is that the movie is a movie (like Blazing Saddles) but it rather pokes fun at all the nuances of the Old Wes,. just like he poked fun at all those Star Wars movies. It’s making fun of just how bad the Old West was to live in, and a majority of the jokes made me chuckle. Yes, there were a lot of misses, but I found the humor to be well done most of the time.
Seth Macfarlane as a lead is a little difficult to get used to, simply because we are so used to him being just a voice out of a cartoon. Liam Neeson as this crude outlaw really didn’t work at all, and I wish they actually went for a different actor that could play a more decent and funny villain. Other than those two things, the chemistry between actors mainly worked, and I love you Charlize Theron.
If you are a big Family Guy fan, odds are you will like this movie. Don’t expect a masterpiece of a film, or the next Blazing Saddles; expect Seth Macfarlane making a funny Western and that is all. Check out my video review below to hear me talk more about it. Let me know if you saw it, and what you thought about it.