According to Seth MacFarlane’s new comedy, there are A Million Ways to Die in the West. Most are pointless (being shot over a jostle in a bar), many are gruesome (having your head bashed in by a giant block of ice), and some are the kinds of things that could only be thought up by an unusually immature first-grader (farting yourself to death).
Pointless, gruesome and immature: That pretty well sums up this latest effort from the maker of Ted and TV’s Family Guy.
The flick starts out promisingly, superimposing the opening credits over shots of Utah’s majestic Monument Valley while Joel McNeely’s equally majestic score plays in the background. Director/co-writer MacFarlane seems intent on capturing the look and feel of classic Westerns, many of which were shot in this same location.
Then, unfortunately, actor MacFarlane enters the scene as an Arizona sheep rancher named Albert, and cinematic nostalgia rides off into the sunset.