| Unfortunately, A Million Ways to Die in the West is a poorly made film that's more concerned with setting up gags than telling a fun story | This 10-digit number is your confirmation number |
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| He deconstructs his own joke while he's telling it, insulting our intelligence and bringing the pace of the scene to a grinding halt | For some, he is a witty, ingenious writer and performer with a gift for puncturing egos; for others, he is nasty, derivative, mean-spirited and crass, whose work lacks the narrative coherency of his betters |
Even if Macfarlane's ambitions didn't extend to a full-on reworking of Thomas Hobbes, he could have taken this central idea further.
| His writing is mediocre, always low-balling it when a person in his position should be taking risks | Whether because his energies are too thinly spread or because he has no real talent at all, he comes up short in every aspect |
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| But the performances are weak, due in part to the writing | And by producing it, alongside good friends Scott Stuber and Jason Clark, there is no-one to rein him in when he starts being narratively flatulent as well as comedically so |
The great comedy westerns of old, like Blazing Saddles, soared because their stories and characters worked on their own merits without them having to constantly try and be funny.
2| Like a lot of American comedians, Macfarlane treats the film as an excuse to play a version of himself in which his ability to wisecrack trumps all other ideas or plot considerations | There is no better example of this than the all-too lengthy scene involving Neil Patrick Harris getting the runs during the gunfight |
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| The central dynamic is simply a lazy and boring regurgitation of the Judd Apatow formula - namely a romance in which a schlubby, incompetent, shallow and cretinous guy ends up with the beautiful, smart, resourceful woman for no good reason | Starring Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, and Liam Neeson, the film features an all-star cast |
It's very tempting to treat any film project as merely an excuse to get in more of the same material, or to allow the jokes to run on for longer than a 20-minute episode would usually permit.
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