My Review: A Million Ways to Die in the West (5/10)

"I'm not the hero. I'm the guy in the crowd making fun of the hero's shirt; that's who I am."

A Million Ways to Die in the West is a comedy that fails at so many levels, but since I had gone into it with low expectations I wasn't really disappointed by it and found some of the scenes extremely funny. On paper this should have been the year's best comedy because it had an excellent cast and an interesting premise. MacFarlane proved he could direct a comedy in the big screen after the success he had with Ted (which I liked, but wasn't blown away by). The first major issue I had with the film was that despite its Western setting it never felt like any of the characters belonged to this world. My second issue was with Seth MacFarlane's performance. He is a funny man, but he is good at writing and doing voice work, not acting, and that was a major flaw in this film because he was one of the main characters and the way he delivered some of the jokes fell flat. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this comedy was that every time they were trying to get the story going and forcing some dialogue scenes they would try to add a poop or fart joke in there somewhere. It was way overdone. I can see how people might have been disappointed with this considering it had so much potential, and despite not liking this film I didn't think it was as terrible as many people claimed because at least it had some funny moments. Still, this is a rotten film and barely enjoyable because it's full of flaws and way too long.

Seth MacFarlane is talented doing voice work and writing some great jokes, but he has some problems with the delivery (something we saw when he hosted the Oscars a couple of years ago). He really hurt this film considering the rest of the cast was pretty funny. Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman, Charlize Theron, and Liam Neeson all give some funny performances and deliver a few laughs. My favorite moments were definitely the cameos (there were some great ones that had me laughing really hard, but I won't spoil them), and I also enjoyed the surprising death scenes and found them kind of hilarious. Maybe I just have a weird sense of humor, but those scenes worked for me. The rest of the film is just overlong and a bit tedious with several jokes that fall flat, making me feel the same way as the townspeople after hearing MacFarlane trying to deliver jokes and avoid getting killed during the duels: dead silence.