Early on in Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West, heartbroken sheepherder Albert (co-writer/director MacFarlane) hunches down at a barroom table with his best friends Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) and Ruth (Sarah Silverman), drowning his sorrows after being dumped by his sweetheart and cynically recounting all of the ways one could meet his or her demise on the frontier. It's a darkly comic rant that's bolstered by the romanticism inherent to the Western genre (the American Western genre, to be specific), as well as the subsequent scenes in which earnest settlers meet their grisly ends performing simple tasks like posing for a photograph. Sadly, for those in search of another Blazing Saddles, that sequence is also about as good as things get in this overlong, undercooked oater comedy.
The setting is Arizona, circa 1882. In the wake of talking his way out of a showdown in the streets of Old Stump, cowardly sheepherder Albert is unceremoniously dumped by his beloved girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried). Meanwhile, on the outskirts of town, notorious outlaw Clinch (Liam Neeson) prepares for a big holdup, instructing his wife Anna (Charlize Theron) and sidekick Lewis (Evan Jones) to pose as a pair of sibling farmers in Old Stump and await his return. When Lewis starts a bar brawl, Albert instinctively gets Anna out of harm's way and a friendship begins to blossom. Later, Anna poses as his girlfriend at a fair in order to make Louise jealous, but it all goes awry when Albert and Louise's new beau Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), the owner of the local moustachery, challenge one another to a duel in front of the entire town. There's only one problem: Albert has never even fired a gun.
Fortunately, as the wife of a notorious outlaw, Anna knows her way around a pistol, and with just one week to go before the big showdown, she offers to give Albert a crash course in marksmanship. With the help of his sexy, straight-shooting teacher, Albert not only manages to hit a can or two, but to summon some inner courage as well. He'll need all he can get, too, because when Clinch gets word that his wife is being romanced by one of the locals, he rides into town with revenge on his mind and a loaded six-shooter on his hip.
A Million Ways to Die in the West works best in its early scenes, when MacFarlane is devoting his energy to mocking Western clichés. The longer the film drags on (and at nearly two hours, it does drag), the more he becomes a slave to those tropes as his focus shifts from serving up gags to servicing the plot. To be fair, the front half of A Million Ways to Die in the West offers a satisfying mix of endearing obscenity and shocking sight gags that keep a grin on your face, even when you're not exactly doubled over with laughter. It's these episodic gags that give supporting players like Harris, Silverman, and Ribisi some of their finest moments in the film. Unfortunately, this section of the movie seems to peak during a barn dance that finds Harris at the height of his moustached glory. Once that conflict is resolved, however, his loss is certainly felt as Neeson dutifully slogs his way through a role that offers precious little to laugh at. Sadly, much the same could be said about Theron, though her natural charm and conflicted character still make her much more appearing than Neeson's one-note black hat.
At this point, not even a hilariously hallucinogenic scene that finds Albert taking peyote with the local Native Americans will be enough to keep viewers from checking their pocket watches. As refreshing as it may be to see MacFarlane unleashed from the shackles of contemporary pop culture, he's still sent to the gallows by a script that he should have shot down.