"A Million Ways To Die In The West": And One Way To Die Of Boredom

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I want to make one point clear at the start of this review: I don’t really like Seth MacFarlane.  His penchant for pop culture reference and cartoony frat-boy non-sequitur shenanigans was amusing to me when I was a teenager watching Family Guy, but as the years have gone by I’ve recognized MacFarlane as a bit of a one-trick pony.  He’s managed to make a decent career for himself off that one trick, and I don’t find him to really be offensive in any way, so I’m pretty content to categorize his humor as something that just doesn’t work for me.  If you like him, that’s fine; to each their own.  That said, even taking into account my dislike for MacFarlane’s comedic sensibilities, A Million Ways To Die In The West is not a good movie.  It’s more like a single episode of Family Guy that’s has been stretched to a two hour breaking point than a solid movie, and the jokes get old pretty fast once you realize that the movie has shown its hand by the end of the first half hour.

And, unfortunately, this film doesn’t have a strong enough plot to carry it without good humor.  MacFarlane plays a sheep farmer who’s self-aware of the shitty living conditions of the old west and is perpetually the smartest guy in the room in a town full of idiots.  He’s the victim of a nice-guys-finish-last scenario when his beautiful girlfriend dumps him for a manlier archetype, and what starts off as a reclamation-of-his-girlfriend quest becomes one of self-discovery and self-esteem with the help of a new love interest who cares for him just the way he is.  Essentially, this is just a high school nerd empowerment fantasy set in the Old West, and the film hits the appropriate beats exactly on que every time.  In other words, we’ve been there, done that.

The only way such a tired premise could work is if substantial comedy writing takes the brunt of the entertainment responsibilities, and it seems like MacFarlane and his writing associates really phoned this one in.  The film has approximately five recurring gags to its credit, and that’s about it.  They usually are a variation on the theme of “Boy, the Old West really kinda sucked, huh?” sometimes followed by some rudimentary slapstick.  But instead of building on its gags to reiterate its points in new and interesting situations, the jokes simply become repetitive.  For example, there’s a joke about a guy dating a prostitute who won’t have sex with him because she genuinely wants to wait until they’re married.  I see how that can be funny, but the film decides to remind us how funny it is by simply repeating the same punchline on at least four separate occasions throughout the film.  Even if you thought it was funny the first time, I doubt you would think it so after two hours of repetition.

A Million Ways To Die In The West is a pretty unfortunate spectacle, as it genuinely seems to think itself a silly Old West comedy in the tradition of something like Blazing Saddles, yet comes off as something left on the cutting room floor for one of MacFarlane’s animated shows.  Its greatest sin is that it just feels boring and tired, the worst thing for any comedy to be.  Even if you like Seth MacFarlane, this probably isn’t the film for you, because MacFarlane certainly hasn’t brought his A-game.

What are your thoughts on Seth MacFarlane?  Overrated?  Underrated?  Don’t really care?  Let me know in the comments below.

"Willow Creek": Better As Unfound Footage

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I’m so fucking sick of found-footage movies.  They’re just an excuse for amateur filmmakers to make a lazy, poorly choreographed product with minimal special effects and a minimal budget.  All it takes are a couple of no-name actors, a camera and some off-camera sound effects, and bam, cheap film.  This isn’t always a bad thing.  The Blair Witch Project pioneered the genre, but that worked so well because the characters were always emoting and there was a constant feeling of dread throughout.  Cloverfield also works decently well because it doesn’t use the shaky-cam as an excuse to not show its monster, but instead allows us to catch glimpses and build up the sense of wonder for what it looks like as a whole, even if the end-result was a bit disappointing.  However, Willow Creek doesn’t follow those examples.

I was actually really hopeful that this would be a decent film, since veteran television director Bobcat Goldthwait sat at the helm for this one.  Found-footage films are usually the domain of newcomers trying to prove their worth with no money, but Bobcat’s been around for a while, so I’d hoped that he would have something new to bring to the table.  Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all; this film falls into the same traps that this genre is constantly victim to.  And the worst part is that the beginning shows a lot of potential for it to be otherwise.

The story follows explorers Kelly and Jim in their search to find Bigfoot.  Jim is a believer, and Kelly is a sceptic, because that’s how these plots work.  They’re making a documentary about their trip, and they begin by interviewing locals before going in and camping at the spot where Bigfoot was first captured on film a few decades ago.  The romantic interactions between Kelly and Jim are sweet and they feel authentic, which is good since this is purportedly supposed to be real events.  The interviews with locals also feel hokey and unscripted, and the film gives off a really cute couples’-adventure vibe for about half of its runtime.

Of course, this is all just set-up for when the ax falls and the dramatic tension sets in, and that tension worthlessly falls flat on its face.  The couple begin to get warned off by threatening hillbillies who don’t want them going into the woods, but they’re nothing more than cardboard-cutout harbingers that we’ve seen in every clichéd horror film ever.  When the couple finally get to the campsite, the big dramatic setpiece of the third act is… huddling in the tent motionless as eerie sounds emanate from outside the tent.  This is boring as hell.  It doesn’t even work well as a jump scare, because the sounds that the Bigfoots (Bigfeet? Bigfi?) make is like a mix between a tornado siren and an old man yelling at you to get off his lawn.  There’s no shock value, and the whole production feels cheap and lazy.

The final shots of the film are, of course, a shaky, split-second shot of the monster, accompanied by a shot of the ground and the sounds of the couple being ripped to pieces.  My reaction: “My god, they’re finally dead so I can turn this off!”  This was perhaps the most boring, trite, and pointless film I’ve seen in a long time.  It doesn’t just stick to genre conventions; it wears only the warts of the genre like they’re badges of honor.  It showed early promise in the first act, but when it came time to deliver the goods, I genuinely believe a first-year film student could have done better.  Just move along, folks.  Nothing to see here.

Can you think of any good found-footage films?  Let me know in the comments below.

"Chef": Vanity Is A Dish Best Not Served At All

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Jon Favreau was a small-time actor who worked his way into directing with the indie film Made, and then into popular discourse with films like Elf and the first two Iron Man films.  Now Favreau has tried to work his way back to his indie roots with Chef, a self-produced, self-starring film that chronicles the life of a master chef as he tries to navigate an overly-controlling boss and an unfair food critic.  I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me like Mr. Favreau has some issues he needs to work out.

The film starts out strong enough, with Favreau’s character facing clear struggles against his restaurant’s establishment and inadvertently starting a flame war on Twitter with the aforementioned critic.  It all feels a bit too much like a heavy-handed metaphor for the life of a director within the constraints of the corporate system, but solid characters make the experience tolerable.  Favreau is surrounded by an eclectic cast of interesting characters, including the zany chefs who work under him, the restaurant’s hostess who functions as his best friend, and Robert Downey Jr. being about as Tony Stark as he can be without infringing on Marvel’s copyright.  They’re all likeable characters with some witty dialogue to round them all out, even if they are all a bit sycophantic to Favreau’s supposed genius.

The film’s primary conflict, though, revolves around Favreau’s son, whom Favreau constantly ignores because of his work.  The two only see each other infrequently due to Favreau’s divorce from the kid’s mother, and when they do see each other, Favreau is either distracted with finding ingredients for his kitchen or doesn’t try very hard to relate with the ten-year-old, mostly because he doesn’t know how.  Eventually, this leads to a heartwarming realization that Favreau can connect with his son by teaching him how to cook, and the two grow close by driving a food truck around the American Southeast and selling to avid crowds of hungry fans.

But this change of pace takes place a mere hour into an almost two-hour film, and the remaining hour is a slog of driving the food truck from location to location and absolutely no conflict takes place.  Favreau takes what starts as a solid narrative film with some annoying self-aggrandizing allegory and turns it into a personal wish-fulfillment fantasy.  He and his son get along great and they have no problems communicating anymore; one of his old chefs just up and quits his job in order to work the food truck with him; even his ex-wife starts to appreciate him again.  Jon Favreau spends the last hour of his return to indie film masturbating into the camera, getting off on just how great his life is now that he’s abandoned the corporately controlled film-making business and is making the movies he wants to make.  As compelling as this may be to him, it’s boring for those who have to put up with his ego.

Chef is by no means a terrible movie, but it is one of the most self-congratulatory and narcissistic I’ve ever seen.  Perhaps I’m a little bit biased based on my knowledge of Favreau’s career, but even taking the film as a whole out of context, it still suffers from narrative pacing issues that completely destroy any pay-off the third act was supposed to provide.  If you want to see Chef, do yourself a favor and turn off the film when Favreau finishes cleaning out the food truck with his kid.  It’ll turn a bad movie into a good one and save about an hour of your life.  If that doesn’t sound appetizing to you, this may be a course you’ll want to skip.

Know of any other narcissistic stabs at film-making?  Let me know in the comments so I can avoid them.