“Oh Seth MacFarlane. Quite the polarizing comedian. Either love him or hate him. No middle ground. Me personally, I absolutely love him. But I completely understand why he gets so much flak from critics. I feel like whatever side of the fence you’re on, that will dictate if this film was for you or not.
As is often the case with him, in West, when something worked, it worked. When it didn’t, cringes were induced. I did find most of the film was hit or miss, and there was no real formula to what fell where. I liked the anachronisms in the language. In references, some were funny, some were awkward. Same can be said for pretty much everything else: absurdities in the plot, the gross out jokes, the signature offensive jokes, the visual gags, even the cast. So many names in this film that I love: NPH, Sarah Silverman, Giovanni Ribisi, the list goes on. They had their moments good and bad.
Surprisingly, the cast member who was most consistently on was Charlize Theron. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that your Oscar winner in the cast turns in the strongest performance, but I would not have pegged her for this type of film. She had the most sincerity, and the only one who resisted the temptation to play the jokes. Everyone else gave in to that at least once. MacFarlane in particular was struggling.
Ultimately, I’m putting this slightly in the win column, just because I did leave there smiling. One advantage to taking my time in getting write ups posted is that I can see how I feel about a film once I’ve processed it a bit. The questionable isn’t what stayed in my brain, so that’s probably a good sign. If nothing else, we got a good theme song out of it
A Million Ways to Die in the West – \m/ \m/ \m/