Seth MacFarlane’s second feature as a director asks a simple question and then spends 116 minutes failing to answer it: what if the Old West really was miserable? A Million Ways to Die in the West, released May 30, 2014, by Universal Pictures, takes that premise and builds a comedy around a sheep farmer who would rather flee to San Francisco than stand in a duel. The film grossed $87.2 million against a $40 million budget. It earned that money. It did not earn much else.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures Australia.
Albert Stark and the Duel He Won’t Fight
MacFarlane plays Albert Stark, a timid sheep farmer in Old Stump, Arizona, in 1882. His girlfriend Louise, played by Amanda Seyfried, breaks up with him because he refuses to defend himself in a duel. He decides to leave for San Francisco, convinced the frontier offers him nothing.
That setup is the film’s best asset. MacFarlane and co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild came up with the project while watching Westerns during the development of Ted (2012). You can feel that origin. The jokes are the jokes of men who love the genre and also find it ridiculous.
The problem is that loving a genre and parodying it are different jobs. A Million Ways to Die in the West never decides which one it is doing.
Anna, Clinch, and the Man Who Shoots a Prospector
Charlize Theron plays Anna, the mysterious new woman in town. She arrives in Old Stump escorted by Lewis, played by Evan Jones, under the guise of siblings looking to build a farm. Lewis is Clinch Leatherwood’s right-hand man.
Before any of that, Liam Neeson’s Clinch shoots and kills an old prospector over a single gold nugget. That is the film’s introduction to its villain. It is also the only moment where the movie’s cruelty has any weight.
Theron later said she “begged” for the role, wanting the chance to work in comedy. She is the best thing in the film. Anna teaches Albert to shoot. She defeats Louise’s arrogant new boyfriend Foy, played by Neil Patrick Harris, in a shooting contest at the county fair. She is competent, funny and completely wasted on a script that keeps handing the good lines to MacFarlane.
Neeson agreed to play Clinch only on the condition that he could use his Irish accent. He explained on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that he made the demand because an episode of MacFarlane’s Family Guy had already joked about the juxtaposition of Neeson playing a cowboy with an Irish accent. It is a good anecdote. It is better than most of what Neeson gets to do on screen.
The Cast That Should Have Saved This
Look at the names. Giovanni Ribisi as Edward. Sarah Silverman as Ruth, a prostitute. Neil Patrick Harris as Foy. Wes Studi as Cochise. Christopher Hagen as George Stark. Matt Clark as the Old Prospector.
Casting ran from December 2012 to March 2013. Theron joined on January 30, 2013. Seyfried joined on February 11. Neeson and Ribisi joined on March 6. Silverman joined on March 18. Harris joined on May 11. Bill Maher joined on May 29, and Gilbert Gottfried joined on February 21, 2014.
That is an ensemble assembled with real care. The film was co-financed by Media Rights Capital and Fuzzy Door Productions, along with Bluegrass Films, and distributed by Universal Studios.
And yet the movie keeps returning to Albert. MacFarlane writes himself the center of every scene and gives himself the punchlines. When you have Theron and Silverman and Harris on set, the decision to keep cutting back to the guy in the sheep farmer hat is not a creative choice. It is a casting error that the script makes permanent.
A Week of Shooting Lessons and One Laxative
Anna suggests Albert delay the duel with Foy by a week, then spends that week teaching him to shoot. She wants him to win back Louise. During a barn dance the night before the duel, Anna slips a laxative into Foy’s whiskey.
After leaving the dance, she and Albert kiss. Lewis, who has broken out of jail and murdered the sheriff, sees the kiss and reports it to Clinch. On the day of the duel, Foy arrives late with severe diarrhea. Albert, having decided Louise is not worth fighting for, forfeits anyway.
Then Clinch arrives at the saloon, reveals Anna is his wife, and threatens to kill more people unless Anna’s lover duels him the next day.
That is the plot. It is not complicated. It is also not funny in the way the film needs it to be, because the film keeps reaching for gross-out gags when it has a genuinely sharp idea sitting right there: that the West was a place where a man could be killed over a single gold nugget and nobody would file a report.
The laxative sequence is the clearest example. It is a joke about diarrhea. It could have been a joke about the absurdity of honor culture. The movie picks the first one.
What the Western Was Always About
The tagline is “Bring protection.” That is the whole pitch. A comedy Western with a cast this good and a premise this simple should not feel this long.
Here is the part worth saying plainly: A Million Ways to Die in the West is not a bad idea. It is a bad execution of a good idea. The film knows the West was filthy, violent and short. It knows a sheep farmer would rather move to San Francisco than die over a woman who dumped him. Those are real comic observations.
But the movie does not trust them. It pads. It repeats. It lets MacFarlane mug for the camera in a way that undercuts every scene Theron is trying to hold together. The 116-minute runtime is not the problem. The problem is that the film does not know when to stop and let a joke land.
Joel McNeely composed the score. Filming began May 6, 2013, in locations across New Mexico including Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and wrapped August 9 that year. The production values are real. The film looks like a Western. It just does not think like one.
The Score
A Million Ways to Die in the West received mixed to negative reviews from critics. That is the polite version. The film sits at 4.4/10 on Metacritic, with a 44/100 score.
“Bring protection.”
That tagline is the funniest thing the movie produced, and it is on the poster.
Here is the schedule of how the film got made, and how it got received:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| December 2012 | Casting begins |
| January 30, 2013 | Charlize Theron joins the film |
| February 11, 2013 | Amanda Seyfried joins the film |
| March 6, 2013 | Liam Neeson and Giovanni Ribisi join the film |
| March 18, 2013 | Sarah Silverman cast as a prostitute |
| May 6, 2013 | Filming begins in New Mexico |
| May 10, 2013 | Media Rights Capital and Fuzzy Door Productions announced as co-financiers |
| May 11, 2013 | Neil Patrick Harris joins the film |
| May 29, 2013 | Bill Maher joins the cast |
| August 9, 2013 | Filming concludes |
| February 21, 2014 | Gilbert Gottfried joins the cast |
| May 30, 2014 | U.S. release |
The film made $87.2 million against a $40 million budget. That is a return. It is not a vindication.
The verdict here is simple. Theron is good. Neeson is having fun. Silverman and Harris are both better than the material. MacFarlane is the problem, and he is also the director, the co-writer and the star, which means nobody on set was in a position to tell him no.
A comedy Western with this cast should be a minor classic. Instead it is a reminder that loving a genre is not the same as understanding it. The West was miserable. So is watching a movie that keeps almost being good.
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