2 Takes On Seth MacFarlane's Newest

I've decided to excuse myself from seeing and reviewing Seth MacFarlane's new comedy Western A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST, simply because, hey, I'm not a fan of the man's brand of comedy. You could probably guess that based on my review of TED. 

However, I was interested in what a few friends, who are MacFarlane fans, thought of the film, which has gathered mostly negative critical reaction (it's at 34% on Rotten Tomatoes) but is at a respectable #3 placing at the box office.

First up, William Fonvielle, who maintains the fine film blog Filmvielle, posted a review Friday. Here's the first half of it:

“Seth MacFarlane specializes in Whitman's Samplers of comedy. Keep digging, and sooner or later you'll find a joke you enjoy. Unfortunately, in the case of A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST, he plays to an audience of mostly diabetics.

Hot off his smash 2012 directorial debut TED, A MILLION WAYS sports all the makings of a passion project for MacFarlane - the sort of sprawling, big budget comedy he can make after earning so much money directly out of the gate. Why else cast himself as the leading man, in addition to directing and co-writing, after a 15 year career spent largely behind the scenes?

Because he can, that's why. Not to knock the guy. That he took this long to step in front of the camera, after spending much of his 30s doing everything else, shows impressive restraint. And he needn't have worried anyway. As a movie star, he brings a completely nonthreatening presence. He doesn't spin gold, but he doesn't embarrass himself either. The same sort of effortless charm you'd expect this deep in a career whose success is rather remarkable considering how many comedy fans fantasize about his head on a stick.

His entire career is really an exercise in conundrums. Does he want to be an old school ENTERTAINER, telling consciously lame one-liners and crooning the standards with utmost sincerity? Does he want to swim in the shallow wading pool of shit and dick jokes? Or possibly be the savior of intellectualism in modern America, blending low and high comedy with aplomb (anyone who's caught him on Real Time With Bill Maher knows he ain't no slouch, brains-wise)?

Such questions extend to A MILLION WAYS. It's a movie that can't decide quite what it wants to be, so it decides to be nothing. As said, MacFarlane stars as Albert, a cowardly sheep farmer in an upstart 1882 Arizona town whose girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried in a nothing role that exists purely to spark conflict) leaves him after he backs out of a duel. 

Soon she's in the arms of another man, local mustachioed gentleman Foy (Neil Patrick Harris, twirling his ‘stache to utmost evil glee), leaving a distraught Albert to wallow in the misery that is the Old West. All until the mysterious and beautiful Anna (Charlize Theron). She's beautiful. She's an expert gunslinger. She also falls for MacFarlane, because MarFarlane made the movie.”

Read the rest of William's review, in which he quips that the film “boasts all the laser focus of a visually impaired child set loose in the bumper cars for the first time,” at Filmvielle.

Secondly, Kevin Brewer, whose podcast postmodcast I've guested on (listen to the latest one here) saw the movie over the weekend and emailed me his thoughts:

“Seth MacFarlane is a divisive pop culture figure, both an undeniable talent and the leading purveyor of fart jokes.

MacFarlane has produced five television series for Fox: one brilliant animated series, two knockoffs of that one, one unwatchable live action sitcom and Cosmos, the critically acclaimed space documentary with Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

His big band album was nominated for a Grammy. He hosted the Oscars. He directed TED and wrote the lyrics for its best song nominee, ‘Everybody Needs a Best Friend.’

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST, MacFarlane’s new satire of 1960s Westerns and their macho bullshit, is more ambitious than TED and more coherent than Family Guy. It is often hilarious. It mostly works. It is, of course, excessively scatological.

Along with writing (with Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild), directing and producing, MacFarlane also stars as cowardly sheep farmer Albert Stark in Arizona in 1882 - ‘a terrible place in time’ -probably because he can’t help himself. He is the bastard son of Mel Brooks (BLAZING SADDLES), making out with Charlize Theron. He is also quite likeable, probably because he looks like grown-up Peter Brady.

There are fart, piss and cum jokes, because, you know, Seth MacFarlane. There is also a carnival game with runaway slaves as the punchline. In the middle of all of that, there is a dance number and fancy score (by Joel McNeely) that proves MacFarlane is capable of much more.

The fact that MacFarlane talked Theron (laughing at all of his jokes), Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried and Neil Patrick Harris (with graphic diarrhea) into this thing is half the fun. Theron makes fun of Seyfried’s big doe-y eyes, which takes balls, because those peepers are two of the most adorable things in Hollywood.

If it matters, Theron dumps boyfriend Neeson, and Seyfriend dumps boyfriend MacFarlane. Seyfried finds Harris, and MacFarlane finds Theron, which pisses off Neeson. Wes Studi, long-suffering Native American supporting character of Westerns, provides spiritual guidance and a drug-induced trip to MacFarlance’s character. Neither MacFarlane nor Brooks have given Indians any revenge for their genocide. Neither has Tarantino.

Sarah Silverman (who else) provides vaginal humor. She is a prolific prostitute who has never had sex with boyfriend Giovanni Ribisi. She is no Madeline Kahn. There are four winning cameos, including one by an Academy Award winner that avenges the earlier goof on slavery. They might be the smartest bits in the movie.”

Sure looks like Kevin liked the film a lot more than William. Does anyone else out there want to speak up?

More later...

Oscars 2013 Recap!

Now, I wouldn’t say Seth MacFarlane outright bombed in his gig as Oscar host last night, but he sure came close with so many of his jokes being cringe-inducing duds and his song and dance routines being show-stoppers in the worst way.

That he didn’t lapse into his Family Guy character voices like he did in his Saturday Night Live monologue last year is one of the few things I can commend about his performance, but it says a lot that one of the only funny bits he was involved in was a sock puppet production of FLIGHT. 

Other attempts at comedy, like MacFarlane singing a song called “We Saw Your Boobs” (a mock tribute to actresses who’ve done nudity) with the Los Angeles Gay Men's Choir, and an ending number with Kristin Chenoweth dedicated to the losers of the evening, fell horribly flat.

I tweeted that Daniel Day-Lewis joking that he was up for the part of Maggie Thatcher in THE IRON LADY while his Oscar presenter Meryl Streep was up for LINCOLN in his acceptance speech for winning Best Actor was funnier than anything MacFarlane said all night, and I wasn’t kidding.

There were a few genuine highlights - Shirley Bassey singing “Goldfinger” for the 50th anniversary tribute to James Bond being one - but it was a largely forgettable show. The rare tie in one category (ZERO DARK THIRTY and SKYFALL shared the Oscar for Best Sound Editing) will probably be as forgotten as the other five times it happened in the Academy’s history. 

A surprise appearance by Barbara Streisand singing “The Way We Were” in tribute to Marvin Hamlisch as part of the IN MEMORIUM segment brought some much needed gravitas to the proceedings. Points to MacFarlane for not making some rude comment later about it.

But now on to how I did with my predictions that I posted last Friday.

Although up until the broadcast I’ve been referring to the 2013 Oscars as the most unpredictable race in recent memory, I got more of the categories right than I have in over half a decade -18 out of 24. That’s better than the 15 I got right last year, and much better than the 13 I got the previous two years before that.

Christoph Waltz for Best Supporting Actor for DJANGO UNCHAINED, and Ang Lee for Best Director of LIFE OF PI were the big surprises last night. I figured Waltz had won, also for a Tarantino picture, not that long ago so I counted him out.

Spielberg seemed like the safe bet for his direction of LINCOLN, but, despite having picked LIFE OF PI for Score, Cinematography, and Visual Effects I really didn’t think it would win Lee the big Best Director award, and from the other predictions I’ve seen, not many others did either.

Here’s what else I got wrong:

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN: I predicted LES MISÉRABLES (Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson), but LINCOLN (Rick Carter, Jim Erickson) got the gold.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: OPEN HEART (Kief Davidson, Cori Shepherd Stern) I’ll just chalk this up to the fact that I didn’t see any of the Documentary Shorts, was just guessing, and I’ll leave it at that. I’ll have to seek out the winner - Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s INOCENTE – sometime soon.

MAKEUP: THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Peter King, Rick Findlater, Tami Lane). I should’ve known THE HOBBIT wouldn’t win anything. It seems obvious in retrospect that Lisa Westcott and Julie Dartnell would get it for LES MISÉRABLES, but then a lot of things do.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: LINCOLN (Tony Kushner) I thought playwright Kushner was a shoo-in, but since I’m more of a fan of Chris Terrio’s screenplay for ARGO I wasn’t disappointed to get this one wrong.

I was happy to be right about ARGO winning Best Picture - Affleck got snubbed for a Best Director nomination, but now that's just a future trivia question.

AMOUR's Best Foreign Picture win and LIFE OF PI's mini sweep with four wins were also nice to see. With hope, those moments will linger longer in memory than MacFarlane's lame material.

More later…

TED: For Seth MacFarlane Fans Only

TED (Dir. Seth MacFarlane, 2012)



“I don’t sound that much like Peter Griffin!” protests the profane protagonist of Seth MacFarlane’s first full-length feature film, but obviously that’s a hollow claim.

MacFarlane, of course, voices Ted, the teddy bear that magically comes alive to a little boy that grows up to be Bostonian man-child played by Mark Wahlberg, and, yes, he sounds exactly like his famous Family Guy character.

That does a lot to call out what this movie essentially is: a collection of gags that were too R-rated for basic cable, decorating a flimsy plot.

It’s a plot everyone should recognize from many movies and sitcoms - a man-child’s girlfriend, in this case played by Mila Kunis, begs her beau to grow up, but he’s too attached to a lifestyle of juvenile high jinks, in this case embodied in a stuffed plush talking toy.

Come to think of it, it was a scenario even used in last year’s THE MUPPETS, with Jason Segel asking himself the musical question is he a “Man or a Muppet,” after being left by Amy Adams.

But at least in that film it was just a silly subplot, and not the full narrative as it is here. An attempt to create conflict between Wahlberg and Kunis by having Joel McHale (Community, Talk Soup) as Kunis’ slimy corporate boss constantly come on to her, doesn’t raise any stakes because of how her character is set up we never believe she would go for him over Wahlberg.

But back to the talking Teddy Bear part, I mean it’s his movie, right? Ted is an aimless comedy archetype – a hard drinking, drugging, foul-mouthed party animal just like last year’s PAUL (which was stupid, sure, but much funnier than this).

With the sheer volume of jokes, one-liners, and pop culture pot-shots, there can’t help but be some humorous moments, but TED gets tiresome really quickly (two 9/11 jokes, really?). The CGI used to animate the bear is flawless, but to what avail with this lazy material?

That is, I suppose, unless you’re a die-hard Family Guy fan, or a big American Dad fan, or even just a casual The Cleveland Show fan (I'm none of those things), and you’re way into folks making fun of crappy movies, celebrities, and music mostly from the ‘80s.

For some reason there’s a lot of focus on the infamous 1980 sci-fi flop FLASH GORDON (it’s the movie Ted and Wahlberg watch the most while getting high, you see), including a lengthy cameo by Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones in a wildly typical party sequence.

At the screening I went to, plenty of people laughed, but how many folks in the audience really knew that 32-year old film? Sure, it’s got a classically kitschy theme song by Queen and it may qualify for the so bad it’s good factor (like Wahlberg says at one point), but is it really worthy of this kind of satiric attention?

MacFarlane takes what feels and looks like a warmed-over Farrelly brothers project, and interjects it with his distinctive smarmy tone. However there is little a bit of a heart within purely because of Kunis’ invested performance. But next time she does a movie like this, she really ought not to waste so much energy.

Oh yeah, there’s also the third act action climax involving a creepy Giovanni Ribisi kidnapping Ted for his rotund son (Aedin Mincks), but, hey, it’s an ending consistent with the uninspired rest of the film.

The not terrible but tedious TED is really a film for MacFarlane fans only, but even they might want to wait to get the inevitable unrated DVD or Blu ray, because I bet it and all the bloopers, gag reels, and outtakes will be much funnier on the small screen.

And as cheap as the humor is in TED, people should really get their money’s worth.

More later...