The Family Guy creator relies heavily on these over the top crass jokes and random pop culture references for his comedy. The only thing is, in the past they worked because it was delivered via a CGI teddy bear and a few odd looking cartoon characters. When it's done with real life human beings however, it just comes off as a bunch of 13 year old boys cracking jokes on one another because they are too scared to admit that they like girls.
So this takes me to A Million Ways, where you are introduced to Albert (MacFarlane). a cowardly sheep farmer in the west whose girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) has just recently broken up with him because she feels as though she needs a real man who can offer her more. Albert takes the breakup pretty hard and begins to realize that living in the final frontier isn't all that it's cracked up to be because there a ton of ways you can die in the west; and to him life out there is pointless with out his girlfriend. That is until he meets the mysterious and beautiful Anna (Charlize Theron), who while waiting for her horrible gun slinging husband to return from his conquest, has befriended and fallen for Albert. As he is showing her the town, he runs into Louise and her douchey new beau (Neil Patrick Harris) at the deadly county fair; and it is here that he has had enough and decides to challenge Harris to a gun fight. The problem is, he's never really fired a gun before and now must rely on Anna to train him before he is killed in said fight. The rest you can figure out for yourself as its really not that deep of a story.
Within the first 15 minutes of the movie, you immediately realize that you have just wasted $11. I have never heard an entire theater be so quiet during a comedy; every joke absolutely bombed. And it never turned into one of those situations where its so bad that it becomes funny. After the first 15 minutes it does get a bit better and there are some jokes that are quite funny but you have to sit through some pretty brutal scenes to get there. And again, the problem is that you have real live humans delivering this sophomoric humor; so it comes off as just that, juvenile. Also, in reality this seemed like a good idea for a 30 minute Family Guy episode that was somehow stretched into a 2 hour long feature film. MacFarlane has this incredibly long rant about how terrible life is in 1882, which would have been funny if he could have done his trademark flashback scenes like he does in his cartoon. But since this isn't a cartoon, you just had to sit there and watch him scream for about 10 minutes (no joke) like he was the dumber cousin of Dennis Miller.
Also it doesn't help that MacFarlane isn't the best looking man in the world. He has these small beady eyes that are both alarming and distracting, so much so that in the scenes where you are supposed to feel sorry for him because he's the lovable protagonist, you instead just feel sorry for him because he looks like a special needs kid. That may be the worst thing I've ever written but it's true!
Theron and Seyfried are easy on the eyes; and Neeson is his usual solid self. And the one scene where MacFarlane is hallucinating with the Indians is clearly the highlight of the film because this is where he sneaks in all of his pop culture references. The sad thing is, his scene with Christopher Lloyd would have been the best surprise of them all had they not ruined that for you in the previews. Oh well, it was still good to hear him yell "Great Scott" one more time.
This movie is a complete waste of time and I suggest that you avoid it at all costs! I rate it as unbelievably WEAK!
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