A Million Ways is an American western comedy written and produced by Seth McFarlane, and features a rather large ensemble of stars including Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Giovanni Ribsi, Sarah Silverman and Liam Neeson. You would think that with a cast this good that this movie would succeed however it falls short nearly every step of the way. The story follows a cowardly sheep farmer Albert Stark (portrayed by Seth McFarlane) who is dumped by his girlfriend and has a fated meeting with a beautiful woman who helps him find his courage. Little does he know that this woman is married to a notorious outlaw who arrives seeking revenge.
Initially I was super excited for this movie since I was pleasantly surprised by Ted which was also written and produced by McFarlane. However as I trudged through this movie I found myself never really laughing and rarely smiling, to be honest throughout the movie I was rather bored. All the jokes in the film were a bit of a hit and miss most likely due to the fact that I had seen many of these jokes in the trailers which was really disappointing to me. The story itself was ok but nothing amazing, and at stages was fairly predictable as is the case with the more awful movies of the year.
One aspect of the movie that really annoyed me was the fact that we were constantly reminded that the west sucks every few minutes. At first it was funny but as the movie went on every few minutes were were reminded that the west sucks, we get it the west sucks move on and find another avenue for your jokes! Many of the jokes in this movie deviated from this the west sucks formula but didn't do enough to make each instance of the joke funny. The movie also felt like a long family guy episode to me because it seemed that the jokes were thrown in randomly instead of flowing properly like they did in Ted. One example I can think of (which we have seen in the trailers) is the scene with the giant ice block which crushes and kills a man. This joke didn't flow from anything and after the gag was complete, the screen cut to black and started a new scene which kind of took me out of the film and made this movie feel like a slideshow of gags rather than a movie with a story that happened to be humorous.
The other aspect of this movie which took me out of the film was the fact that Seth McFarlane's character was kind of crap. He doesn't really sell the jokes all he does is react tot the situations with over the top expressions. Honestly I didn't really find his character to be funny for most of the movie. This was the case with many of the characters, they were all vanilla and a bit bland and only seemed to serve the purpose of being vessels for jokes rather than living, breathing characters. I found myself constantly comparing this movie to Ted as that movie actually felt like a movie as it told a story (as cliched as it was).
One thing which did make me smile wasn't the actual jokes in the movie but rather the references to other films which were set in the west. The first one we see is a back to the future reference with the professor tinkering with the delorean in a building which actually made my eyes light up. But alas it was just a cameo reference and didn't serve any purpose to the plot, similar to the ice block gag. The second reference was the Django Unchained reference which was shown prior to and after the credits which I also found amusing. Another more subtle reference that Family Guy fans will notice is that Liam Neesons character is based off the gag made bout Neeson himself in an episode of Family Guy. Overall this movie was kind of boring for my tastes and I was constantly looking at my watch throughout the movie. The star studded cast were underutilized with the lime light being on McFarlane. It was a shame that none of the characters popped or were memorable.
Overall this movie gets one Seth McFarlane head out of five. I wouldn't bother watching this movie unless you are into bad movies or intoxicated because I honestly don't see any other way to enjoy this film. If you want to watch movies that a similar (and probably better) then check out this selection below.
Review Written by Armour Dude
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