A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014)

A modern comedy Western. This seems somewhat divisive - people either seem to get it or they don’t. I definitely fall into the category of “don’t get it”. I have a couple of main issues with it. First that none of the jokes are really very interesting or clever: the only thing that seemed amusing or original was the idea of the prostitute who’s waiting until marriage with her boyfriend but even that was over-used. The central joke of the film—that there’s lots of ways to die in the old west—wasn’t that funny to me and seemed laboured and over-explained. Second the dialogue of the characters made them all seem very “modern”, which was undoubtedly an intentional choice but really removed all sense of the setting.

It isn’t all unmitigatedly bad: some of the low-brow humour hits the mark (a scene involving diarrhoea and hats is pretty funny, probably because Neil Patrick Harris really gets into the physical comedy side of it); there’s an amusing moustache related song, and the closing credits song is a good pastiche of Frankie Laine’s 50s Western songs too; and Liam Neeson is well suited as the villain by mostly playing it entirely straight. There were also a few bits that were funny in principle, but I felt the film hadn’t really built up enough of its own good-will to pull off – notably a Back to the Future reference.

In summary, I’m not a fan, but I think that’s just because it didn’t match my taste and there definitely are people that will enjoy it.