The opening credits make the most of Western vistas and a familiar Bonanza-style score, and the film opens on a particularly bad day for Albert. Meanwhile, Edward is in love with Ruth (Sarah Silverman), who puts in long hours at the local house of ill repute, but he wants to wait to consummate their romance until after marriage. "You're late," snarls his ornery dad (Christopher Hagen).Īlbert reminds his best friend Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) that the mayor has been lying dead outside the saloon for days and no one seems to notice. They glower when he comes through the door. He lives with his sullen, aging parents who make the farming couple in Grant Wood's American Gothic painting seem warm and cuddly. Albert finds life both dangerous and dull. "We should all just wear coffins for clothes," says Albert (MacFarlane), a nerdy sheep farmer living in Old Stump, Ariz., in 1882. If the snakes didn't get you, the bandits, cholera, tumbleweeds or county fair would. Sure the sunsets were striking, but the Wild West was a minefield of murderous hazards. MacFarlane pokes fun at an epoch in American history routinely romanticized in film. As directed, produced and co-written by Ted's MacFarlane, the premise is humorous and the performances winning, so the reliance on raunch seems unnecessary and its gross-out gags off-putting. The only hitch in its giddy-up is how much it incorporates sophomoric and scatological humor.
It entertainingly spoofs the era, offering a satirical take on movie Westerns. Seth MacFarlane's bawdy absurdist comic Western ( *** out of four rated R opening Thursday night in some theaters and Friday nationwide) boasts a clever high concept, with lots of knowing jokes about the American frontier. And, as with Mel Brooks' classic 1974 film, it steps unabashedly into vulgar terrain.
Like Blazing Saddles, A Million Ways to Die in the West has a slew of comic set-ups and one-liners that kill. Watch Video: Screening Room: 'A Million Ways to Die in the West'