This week, audiences will finally get the chance to see Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West, the Family Guy funnyman’s cinematic follow-up to 2012’s smash hit Ted. At this point, it would be very surprising if the film didn’t do well at the box office. Whether the comedy Western succeeds with critics, however, is a different question entirely.
Ted definitely had its moments, but was noticeably scattershot, particularly in its second half. The clips we’ve seen from A Million Ways to Die in the West are mostly funny, to be sure, but they’re also pulled from most of the same scenes. Now, thanks to Collider, we have a compilation of new clips, which warranted a few chuckles on my end but nothing more. A new set of images, which you can also check out below, contain some funny visual gags, character shots and one behind-the-scenes pic.
Looking at the footage, Neil Patrick Harris’s character seems like the film’s most lethal comedy weapon. His scene mocking MacFarlane’s sheep-herder character is the funniest thing I’ve seen from A Million Ways to Die in the West thus far.
That being said I’m not convinced that the film will be able to sustain itself for a reported 116 minutes on raunch alone, but that’s surely how MacFarlane is selling it. Luckily, he has a strong cast for his sophomore directorial outing, most excitingly Oscar winner Charlize Theron and Oscar nominee Liam Neeson. In a perfect world, their involvement would assure me that A Million Ways to Die in the West will succeed. Then again, Neeson’s resume is littered with paycheck roles in films like Wrath of the Titans and Battleship, and Theron has appeared in drivel before (Hancock, anyone?), so that’s not exactly a safe assumption.
Still, we’ll all find out soon enough what MacFarlane has up his sleeve, as A Million Ways to Die in the West opens this Friday, May 30th.
