A Million Ways to Die In the West (Seth MacFarlane, June 2014)

[madhair60]

HERE'S THE TRAILER THEN

I think this will be a laugh.

[Phil_A]

Nah mate, looks fucking shit.

I don't quite get what the setting is supposed to be. Is it some kind of Western theme town, or is just a real Western town where everyone there just looks and acts like it's now because McFarlane thinks that's the funniest thing ever?

[olliebean]

The caption on the first shot says "Arizona, 1882" so I'm guessing the latter.

[Glebe]

Big, lazy, easy, obvious, populist laughs there, all intended to have the cinema ringing with the laughter of twats and going "that looks good, actually!" Was expecting this to be decent but it looks a bit half-baked. Ted had it's moments but I thought a lot of it was a bit cheap and mean (my problem with Family Guy, actually). Shit for cunts.

[mothman]

Now, that IS a funny trailer. I LOLed.

But it doesn't mean it'll be a funny film. Or even a good one. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the exact opposite on both counts. If you're just going to have your characters expressing modern attitudes and speaking modern dialogue, why bother making a period piece at all? Generally the prevailing wisdom in Hollywood is, you mix your genres at your peril. Is it a Western? Is it a modern gross-out comedy? You end up trying to please everybody - but pleasing no-one. For example, Western fans will rapidly tire of what they see as outright pisstaking of their favourite genre.

On another count, Seth McFarlane is a leading man now? Obviously his work as a writer, director and VO artist has been feted; but I'm not sure I've ever actually see him doing live-action: yet, suddenly he's playing a romantic lead opposite Charlize Theron?

I can see the short TV ad spots, highlights from the trailer interspersed with some mooks, from, I dunno, Basingstoke, saying how much they enjoyed the film, already...

[Sam]

Christ, that looks awful. Live action Family Guy! See MacFarlane's smug face as well as hearing it! Have your expectations confounded by people saying crass things! Listen to a closeted man insist on telling you he knows about heterosexuality because he's using all the naughty words like teenage boys who fancy women do!

[Thomas]

Few examples in there of gags going on for one line too many. I think. Watched the trailer a short while ago, can't really remember.

[madhair60]

I can't wait to be a big, lazy, populist twat and laugh loudly and joyfully at pretend death.

[Bored of Canada]

It doesn't look terrible. Doesn't look great though. But I don't know, I like that it exists even though I won't see it. A nice big budget comedy thing, trying to be a comedy, that will make people laugh, that's not from 2 of the 6 writers of Scary Movie? I think it's nice. They're honestly pretty uncommon. Except for people from the Apatow crowd.

The trailer didn't make me laugh or anything, but it made me smile at a few things. But the jokes have clearly been edited for the trailer, the jokes in the thing would have more pacing to them, I'm sure, so I don't think it's fair to judge the writing purely on the trailer.

I won't bother seeing it, but I bet if I did, I'd get a few laughs out of it. I didn't see Ted, and I kinda really loathe Modern Family Guy, but still, this could be alright.

[McFlymo]

I'm with BoC.

The trailers for TED (and probably Mark Wahlberg) meant I vowed never to put myself through it. I still haven't.

I also have very low tolerance for Family Guy. No interest in The Cleveland Show or American Dad (although apparently later series have seen more interesting and experimental things happen to the format). I still find Seth MacFarlane a bit of an inspirational maverick though: He's managed to do a lot of pretty impressive, original comedy, Family Guy's animation and style has always impressed me, his voice acting is superb and he seems like a genuinely cool dude.

I reckon A Million Ways to Die In the West isn't going to be my kind of comedy, but I'm tempted to see it for a few cheap laughs. It looks kinda pretty too.

Shit for cunts, but go on then!

[Mister Six]

I've never liked Family Guy and have no interest in McFarlane's other shows, but I did think Ted was pretty amusing, and I quite like him as a performer.

So while I'll give him the benefit of the doubt here, I think this is a shitty trailer. So there's a cursed carnival that everyone dies at? But then everyone's dying in that town anyway, irrespective of the carnival? Why is the protagonist sometimes startled by the weird deaths, but sometimes blasé? Is all that stuff just a background to the relationship and villain plots (both of which seem to have equal weight in the film)? If so, why is it so prominent in the trailer?

I suspect the answer to this is that the film's actually just a messy pile of gags and wacky scenes that doesn't work as a narrative. Which would be a shame, because Ted hung together really well as a film (even if the peril at the end was a bit contrived).

[stunted]

He drank the whole thing when he wasn't supposed to, the idea of tripping is inherently hilarious! People saying crude things with subtitles, it's funny because subtitles are highbrow! It's funny because native Americans don't have a sense of humour!

Feels like I've seen all these jokes somewhere before and they're still shite. The cartoon violence has potential[nb]and even that will no doubt be ruined by noughties interjections like OHH SHIT[/nb] but every other aspect looks like fucking garbage.

[neveragain]

If you're just going to have your characters expressing modern attitudes and speaking modern dialogue, why bother making a period piece at all? Generally the prevailing wisdom in Hollywood is, you mix your genres at your peril.

Blazing Saddles, Holy Grail, Life of Brian, Top Secret!, maybe Hot Shots (the first one's in the 50's, isn't it?) ... There are plenty of exceptions to that rule. As is often mentioned in the Python film DVD extras, humour comes from acknowledging that people from the past still have the same hang-ups as those in the present and although they would have spoken differently we are still fundamentally the same.
Now onto this one. Despite this not seeming great, I'd still say that the best bits of McFarlane's stuff defecate over a lot of modern comedy so I'm happy to go along with this; knowing there will be at least a few good laughs.

[Glebe]

I can't wait to be a big, lazy, populist twat and laugh loudly and joyfully at pretend death.

Hehe, sorry madhair didn't mean it like that! To be honest it did amuse me, but I just wish McFarlane would change the record a bit... the more popular Family Guy became and the more he started mixing it up with the stars on those roasts etc., the less likeable he seems to have become. There's a lazy mean streak in a lot of his stuff that irritates me.

Hot Shots (the first one's in the 50's, isn't it?)

Nope, but there are parodies of older films in it, which is maybe why it seems like that.

[up_the_hampipe]

I'll go and see it, if only for Sarah Silverman in a corset. Oh mama!

[Bad Ambassador]

OH SHIT

[Ignatius_S]

On the basis of the trailer, MacFarlane should have worn a bear suit – I think people would like to see that.

One thing that I have found curious is that they've been giving so much of the story away – e.g. the 'joke' about Silverman's character was revealed about a year ago.

Oh, and there's a novel – penned by MacFarlane himself, allegedly.

[neveragain]

...and Blackadder. Forgot to mention him in my post up there.

[Glebe]

Saw this yesterday. Some very funny bits, a lot of cheap, crude gags (surprize, surprize), some good cameos and in-jokes and it's all a wee bit meh in the end.

[Ignatius_S]

It's been pretty much received a critical booting. In terms of box office, the studio set very modest expectations for the opening weekend pretty low but it fell well short. The budget was meant to have been fairly low, so I'm sure that it will turn a profit, but they must be hoping that the core fans will give it some legs.

I thought the trailers were pretty bad and there were some negative comments about how one totally spoiled a cameo. Anyway, I stand by my previous comment – MacFarlane in a bear suit should have been employed. Fans of Ted and people with furry fetishes would have made this a hit.

[Glebe]

As I said, it's quite funny in places (Neil Patrick Harris is a stand-out) and just crude and mean in others. I'm pretty tired of McFarlane's cheap shots and cruelty at this stage, to be honest. And it's not that every scene has to be all-out satire - some of the dramatic/romantic interludes are well performed and not really out of place - but there are definitely some earnest, 'straight' bits that just don't fit in with McFarlane's irreverent style.

[Pit-Pat]

Isn't MacFarlane such a weird screen presence? His incongruous, authoritative voice. His odd, handsome babyface. His tiny, twinkly eyes and his teenager hair and his perfectly white teeth [and what else and what else][nb]Copyright Wendi Deng[/nb]. He's so oddly artificial looking and his (Brian) voice sounds so dubbed that he's almost impossible to sympathise or identify with in any way.

I find, at least...

[Replies From View]

Has everything above his beard-line been airbrushed?  I don't understand that face at all.

[Pit-Pat]

Has everything above his beard-line been airbrushed?  I don't understand that face at all.

He's like a human uncanny valley!

People quite rightly deride Family Guy for increasingly only punching down, but where is there up for Seth MacFarlane to punch? He's a good-looking, white, (probably) billionaire with perfect dentistry. All of us are just ants to him.

The New Yorker did an interesting blog post about him when he hosted the Oscars last year (here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/02/seth-macfarlane-creepy-imitator.html, which itself links to an even more interesting, very long profile of him) and he comes across as almost totally inhuman.

[Noodle Lizard]

Him and Joseph Gordon-Levitt will both be revealed to be androids one day.  I guarantee it.  These are NOT REAL HUMANS.

[up_the_hampipe]

Here he is in 2006. He hasn't always been a Hollywood cyborg. I don't know what they do to people in Hollywood, but it scares me.

[SteveDave]

Tan. Lost some face weight. Better hair. Possible teeth work.

[Replies From View]

He reminds me of the people Louis Theroux met on his programme about hypnotist salesmen or whatever they were called.  The ones who said something like "no challenge" instead of "no problem" because of negativity implied by the word "problem" even when you have "no" in front of it.

He looks like a flaming tosser basically.

[El Unicornio, mang]

He overslept and missed one of the 9/11 flights too, so he's also a jammy bastard.

Edit to add: not to mention dating Emilia Clarke for a while

[DJ Solid Snail]

Here's Red Letter Media's coverage, which has convinced me not to bother.