If a movie as lazy and uninspired as ¡°A Million Ways to Die in the West¡± can get horrible press, bad word of mouth and still make its money back at the box office, then we¡¯re doomed. ¡°Family Guy¡± creator Seth MacFarlane¡¯s follow-up to his debut film ¡°Ted¡± is basically another vehicle for his usual borderline-offensive sense of humor, but set in the Old West. Good parodies show a keen eye for the material they are sending up, but MacFarlane¡¯s knowledge of the genre doesn¡¯t seem to extend beyond The Three Stooges¡¯ ¡°Out West.¡±
Magnifying problems is the onset of MacFarlane¡¯s Woody Allen complex, where he¡¯s no longer just the comic talent behind the camera, but also the dweeby leading man who gets the fantastic-looking girl. He plays a cowardly sheep rancher named Albert who¡¯s dumped by his girlfriend, Louise (Amanda Seyfried); when he rashly challenges her new paramour, Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), to a duel, it¡¯s up to gunslinger-babe Anna (Charlize Theron) to get him up to speed. There are flashes of MacFarlane¡¯s unique sense of absurdity here and there (Foy¡¯s mustache-obsession, an Abraham Lincoln cameo), but the bulk of the film is filled with tired scatological jokes.
| Rating | |
|---|---|
| Director | Seth MacFarlane |
| Language | English |
| Opens | Oct. 10 |
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