A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on May 31, 2014 @ tonymacklin.net.

A Million Ways to Die in the West is a clumsy, overwrought comedy. It's raucously dumb.

It could be subtitled How the Wit Was Lost.

It doesn't push the envelope - it crams it full of urine and excrement and wallows in it, as it seeps all over the screen. The saddles aren't blazing; they're damp.

In an act of unbridled ego, Seth MacFarlane casts himself as leading man. Often adept behind the curtain, out-front MacFarlane is a vapid comic actor. James Garner could bring off that kind of role (Support Your Local Sheriff, 1969), but MacFarlane can't.

Set in a frontier town in Arizona in 1882, A Million Fartfalls in the West is the tale of Albert Stark (MacFarlane), a sheep rancher who hates the frontier.

After being dumped by his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried), Albert meets Anna (Charlize Theron), who helps him try to win Louise back. She teaches Albert how to shoot a pistol when he is scheduled to duel Louise's new boyfriend mustachioed Foy (Neil Patrick Harris).

Anna's husband, the vicious Clinch (Liam Neesom), with his gang is on the way to town.

The only performance that MacFarlane is better than is Bill Maher's hackneyed cameo. MacFarlane makes Giovanni Ribisi, who plays a dopey friend, seem stellar.

Charlize Theron is a good sport, laughing - sometimes howling - at MacFarlane's lines. Theron retains a smidgen of grace amidst the lack of style. She and the majestic frontier setting bring a trampled bit of naturalness amidst the self-indulgent nonsense.

Liam Neesom's nasty character seems from another movie.

The screenplay is credited to MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild. It has a potentially good concept - the old west was an unappealing place. But it's a concept that gets drowned in sludge.

In a representative line of dialogue, Albert says to Anna, "Pretend you just said something funny." Boy, does she have to pretend.

Anna married Clinch when she was 9 years old. She had sex at 10. She married because she didn't want to be a "15 year old spinster." A 15 year old probably wrote that.

Redundancy is the basis of the dialogue and action. There's more than one scene of sheep urinating. Be still my heart.

Albert even explains an obvious joke. That kind of coyness is everywhere in A Million Ways to Die in the West.

Sarah Silverman is perky and bright-eyed as a whore who is a Christian.

She's not the only whore in this film.