A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014) * *

Directed by:  Seth MacFarlane

Starring:  Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Sarah Silverman, Giovanni Ribisi

I assumed all of the possibilities for spoofing a Western were exhausted.     Westerns are rarely made anymore and spoofs of them even less so.     However, Seth MacFarlane tries with A Million Ways to Die in the West, which has its funny moments, but is uneven and entirely too long.     Why are comedies these days pushing two hours?     Do filmmakers think we really want to laugh that much?    Did Judd Apatow's editor work on this film?  

MacFarlane attempts many methods to pry laughs from this material.    MacFarlane's last film was Ted (2012), where he voiced a Peter Griffin-sounding teddy bear that hung around with Mark Wahlberg.    Ted was bereft of good laughs and was borderline creepy by the end.    It didn't work.   MacFarlane as the lead here and he approaches the material like someone who has seen a lot of Westerns and traveled back to 1882 Arizona to provide commentary to its denizens.     

MacFarlane plays Albert Stark (no relation to Tony Stark from Iron Man), a hapless, cowardly sheep farmer whose girlfriend (Seyfried) dumps him for Foy (Harris), a proudly mustachioed, arrogant chap who tends to his mustache like a fetishist.     Albert's friends are Ed (Ribisi) and Ruth (Silverman), a couple waiting for marriage to have sex even though Ruth is a prostitute.    "We are good Christians," says Ed, more than once I might add.     Another woman comes into the picture named Anna (Theron), who is the wife of notorious killer Clinch Leatherwood (Neeson).     She and Albert strike up a friendship which of course turns to love.    Clinch comes to town, learns of their friendship, and challenges Albert to a duel.  

The plot is not terribly important.    Nothing happens here that is unusual or surprising, so we have to rely on the laughs to pull through.   I laughed sporadically, but each laugh was an island unto itself.     Reflecting back a few days after seeing the movie, I can't tell you exactly what scenes really made me laugh, although I know they were there somewhere.    One section that didn't provide any humor was Albert getting stoned with local Native Americans.   Why is Albert being greeted by creepy hallucinations funny?    

The funniest thing about the movie was a piece of trivia I read about on imdb.com.    It said Liam Neeson only agreed to play Clinch if he was allowed to speak in an Irish brogue.    Has he ever done otherwise?   Like Sean Connery's Scottish accent, you don't even bother trying to figure out why he has one.    You just accept it and move on.  

A Million Ways to Die in the West isn't as bad as Ted, which is faint praise..    It wants to make you laugh, but only succeeds sparingly.    MacFarlane tries verbal humor, puns, scatological humor, bodily functions, and slapstick.    It results in an uneven tone, although I have to confess that any movie that makes fun of Amanda Seyfried's big eyes can't be all bad.