Saddular Malfunction
There’s more than one horse in the fictional frontier village of Old Stump, Arizona. But it’s definitely a one-joke town.
The joke in “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” Seth MacFarlane’s hapless comedy is this: What happens if you plop a wisecracking, second-rate 21st-century humorist in the Wild West? Not much, that’s what.
MacFarlane, playing milquetoast sheep farmer Albert, violates the cardinal rule of storytelling within the first 20 minutes of the movie: show, don’t tell. In a stunningly unfunny soliloquy inside a saloon, he tells his best friends, prostitute Ruth (Sarah Silverman) and her boyfriend Edward (Giovanni Ribisi), why life in the 19th century sucks. Because just about anything and everything can and/or wants to kill you.
And it’s pretty much downhill from there. Desperate for laughs, MacFarlane populates the film with gross-out humor that would make Adam Sandler proud. Body parts fly, extras are mushed to bloody pulps, and, as the piece-de-resistance, there is scatological matter to fill every hole in the so-called plot.
That involves the arrival of Anna (Charlize Theron), gunslinging wife of evil gunslinger Clinch (Liam Neeson), who soon falls to the dim charms of Albert. They share a strong distaste for the Old West, see? Yuck. Yuck.
When Clinch and his gang ride back into town to settle the score with Albert, he has already been the beneficiary of shooting lessons with Anna, most of the time missing his target from point blank range. The inevitable denouement comes only after endless diversions that include an insulting pow-wow with Native Americans, a Star Trek meets Monty Python riff, and a pointless cameo by Christopher Lloyd as “Back to the Future’s” Doc Brown, looking, unfortunately, much worse for wear.
I won’t say that “West” doesn’t have a few glimmers of bemusement that peek through the dust. They come mostly in the form of toss-off lines like, “His throat was slit by a passing tumbleweed,” and bits of obvious improv when MacFarlane coaxes a hearty laugh from Theron, if only a smile from the rest of us, or a fake fight between Riblisi and MacFarlane to keep themselves out of harm’s way.
But perhaps the movie’s best assets, so to speak, are thrown to the wolves. The dirty-minded Silverman and the droll Riblisi have to make do with the only other viable joke in the movie: that she sleeps with at least ten guys a day, but won’t have premarital sex with her boyfriend because they are Good Christians.
Those moments of visual humor when Albert can’t shoot straight are good for a few chuckles, but like every other promising fragment, MacFarlane milks them endlessly, lacking much else to do. Sadly, the image of repeatedly misfiring pretty much sums up this lame effort.
The joke in “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” Seth MacFarlane’s hapless comedy is this: What happens if you plop a wisecracking, second-rate 21st-century humorist in the Wild West? Not much, that’s what.
MacFarlane, playing milquetoast sheep farmer Albert, violates the cardinal rule of storytelling within the first 20 minutes of the movie: show, don’t tell. In a stunningly unfunny soliloquy inside a saloon, he tells his best friends, prostitute Ruth (Sarah Silverman) and her boyfriend Edward (Giovanni Ribisi), why life in the 19th century sucks. Because just about anything and everything can and/or wants to kill you.
And it’s pretty much downhill from there. Desperate for laughs, MacFarlane populates the film with gross-out humor that would make Adam Sandler proud. Body parts fly, extras are mushed to bloody pulps, and, as the piece-de-resistance, there is scatological matter to fill every hole in the so-called plot.
That involves the arrival of Anna (Charlize Theron), gunslinging wife of evil gunslinger Clinch (Liam Neeson), who soon falls to the dim charms of Albert. They share a strong distaste for the Old West, see? Yuck. Yuck.
When Clinch and his gang ride back into town to settle the score with Albert, he has already been the beneficiary of shooting lessons with Anna, most of the time missing his target from point blank range. The inevitable denouement comes only after endless diversions that include an insulting pow-wow with Native Americans, a Star Trek meets Monty Python riff, and a pointless cameo by Christopher Lloyd as “Back to the Future’s” Doc Brown, looking, unfortunately, much worse for wear.
I won’t say that “West” doesn’t have a few glimmers of bemusement that peek through the dust. They come mostly in the form of toss-off lines like, “His throat was slit by a passing tumbleweed,” and bits of obvious improv when MacFarlane coaxes a hearty laugh from Theron, if only a smile from the rest of us, or a fake fight between Riblisi and MacFarlane to keep themselves out of harm’s way.
But perhaps the movie’s best assets, so to speak, are thrown to the wolves. The dirty-minded Silverman and the droll Riblisi have to make do with the only other viable joke in the movie: that she sleeps with at least ten guys a day, but won’t have premarital sex with her boyfriend because they are Good Christians.
Those moments of visual humor when Albert can’t shoot straight are good for a few chuckles, but like every other promising fragment, MacFarlane milks them endlessly, lacking much else to do. Sadly, the image of repeatedly misfiring pretty much sums up this lame effort.