A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014) Review

A Million Ways to Die in the West is directed, written and stars Seth MacFarlane, and he plays a character that is fed up with living in the west. People die by outrages incidents and his character doesn't like it. Then Seth MacFarlane’s character who is called Albert meets this girl played by Charlize Theron, who plays Anna, and these two have chemistry but the problem is Seth’s character is still in love with his old girlfriend played by Amanda Seyfried and Charlize’s character is married to the evil villain whom barely gets screen time Liam Neeson. Oh let’s not forget Amanda Seyfried character is going out with Neil Patrick Harris who mocks Seth Macfarlane’s character. There are also Giovanni Ribisi and Sarah Silverman in the film. Now as you can tell there’s too much going on.

I am a big Seth MacFarlane fan, I love Family Guy and Ted, I even like American Dad. So going into this film I thought I was getting many ways people die in the West with the Seth MacFarlane humour, and this was intensified by the trailers that I had watched. But this film was not like that, it had too much going on. I was watching it and thinking “what?!” Instead of getting funny ways people die, I was getting bloated love story that had nothing to do with anything. It was a struggle to understand what Seth Macfarlane wanted to achieve, did he want to make a romance film, did he want to make a comedy in the west, or did he want a great western comedy, the answer is I don’t know. There was so much story I think he wanted that he thought lets cram it in a film that was 1 hour and 40 minutes, not even 2 hours would have saved this mess. The film had started to drag because of the story, on certain occasions I checked how long was left, and that is not a good sign of an entertaining movie. If Seth Macfarlane had concentrated on the funny ways people die in the West, then we would have had a funny story, but because of the four other plots involved, the film was boring.

We all know Seth MacFarlane is a funny man so when I only laughed about twice in the movie then we know it was not good. There were some funny parts of the film, mainly because they were unexpected but the rest just flew by me. It wasn't even the case of it was funny but not laughing funny (If you get what I mean), it was just not funny. A bit of me does blame the trailers because they did spoil probably the best jokes in the film which frustrates me because a trailer should not do that, a trailer should tease the audience of what the film is going to be about. But Seth had an off day as well when writing those jokes which is a shame because that would have at least made the film entertaining.

Now what was good about A Million Ways to Die in the West was the opening credits because the song they played reminded me of the Family Guy specials they do with Stewie and Brian and that got me more excited for the film as I was expecting Family Guy jokes and gags (but sadly I was disappointed). There were also two cameos in the film which was unexpected and that was great to watch.

Overall the film tried too much and had no real direction on what it was trying to be. It was a shame as I am a big fan of Seth MacFarlane but hopefully Ted 2 can redeem himself. Let’s be honest Seth MacFarlane probably won’t take it too hard because he will probably mock himself in Family Guy soon. But I have to give A Million Ways to Die in the West a 6/10