A Million Ways to Die in the West

A Million Ways to Die in the West

Unforeseen triumphs often lead to blunders in creativity. Nobody was there to fix his extremist inclinations, let him know that casting himself as the main character might have been a bad idea or tell him that breezy comedies shouldn’t be pushing two hours long. Seth MacFarlane’s blank check from the success of “Ted” is everything wrong with “A Million Ways to Die in the West.” It’s like what would happen if a man child were allowed to do whatever he wanted because it worked last time and yes, every level it fails on is as bad as that analogy. There are jokes that hit the Monument Valley desert floor so hard no one I saw during the screening laughed. Not one person. Which begs the question: How did they make it through post production?

Inexplicably set in 1882 Arizona, Albert Stark (MacFarlane) is a sheep herder living only because he hasn’t died yet. As he repeatedly points out MacFarlane never wrote a joke he only wanted to tell once Cholera, wolves, gunslingers, runaway bulls, exploding flash bulbs; something will kill you on the Wild West frontier. An antisocial guy written with an awareness of what’s happening around him that makes him feel like a time traveler should therefore be funnier than Albert Stark ever gets to be.

His life changes when Anna comes to town. Played by Charlize Theron with more wit and charm than this movie deserves, she sees something in Albert. She sees how great he really is deep down inside himself even though MacFarlane didn’t write that into the character either. Yes, “A Million Ways to Die in the West” is about a man who gets dumped by Amanda Seyfried only for Charlize Theron to fall head over cowboy boots for him instead and yet somehow still manages not to make Albert interesting or funny.

Actually I’d rather hang out with Louise and Foy. Or even buddy Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) and his prostitute girlfriend (Sarah Silverman), who don’t have sex even though she sleeps with a dozen guys a day and schedules appointments for anal again, if you find that joke funny, good news, it will be repeated multiple times.

Anna has a secret: she’s truly the wife of notorious Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), a man in black who is riding to town to I don’t know, blow it up or something. MacFarlane doesn’t even bother setting up a film that deconstructs the Western in any sort of narrative sense; he’s got too many piss jokes to tell. Look, I don’t mind pushing the envelope when it comes to taste in comedy, but there’s a difference between being edgy and just thinking poop is inherently funny.

And more than that he ruins every joke before he tells it. He’s the guy who loves the punchline so much he forgets about the set-up. A bit with a family not smiling in a photo at the county fair would be funnier if it weren’t a repeat from 10 minutes ago. Ditto quack doctors. Ditto everything after Ribisi and Silverman’s first scene. The throwaway gags are chuckle-worthy because they don’t feel underlined, highlighted and accompanied by a neon sign begging you to laugh at them.

It also doesn’t help that MacFarlane brings zero filmmaking style to his film here; maybe he was too distracted by his performance to notice that “A Million Ways” looks like a TV special? There were times where I was convinced that he was going for some kind of purposefully constructed aesthetic an old fashioned Western thing and times where I think he just didn’t try at all: It doesn’t have to look good, right?

As long as we get people talking with our gross out humor, everything else will be forgiven right? Did you hear the one about the writer/director whose success blinded him to what people actually liked about his first movie? It’s not that funny.

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