The Family Guy creator steps into his first starring role in his new comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West , but it doesn’t make a great case for taking the spotlight.
Charlize Theron and Seth MacFarlane in A Million Ways to Die in the West
Universal Pictures
It's been a long, snaky road from animator to star for Seth MacFarlane, but he's finally made it with A Million Ways to Die in the West, the Western comedy he co-wrote and directed that opens in theaters this Friday. The film features the Family Guy creator in his first live-action leading role as Albert, a cowardly sheep farmer living in Arizona in 1882 — a development the world may not have been waiting on anxiously, but MacFarlane sure seems to have been.
The massively successful TV producer has always shown an urge to perform, even as he's built an animated empire over the course of the last decade. MacFarlane's voiced major characters in all of his animated series, including Peter, Brian, and Stewie Griffin, as well as the titular teddy bear in his movie directorial debut Ted. He's also recorded albums of swing and jazz standards and hosted Saturday Night Live, Comedy Central roasts, and a particularly divisive Academy Awards.
When it comes to television, MacFarlane's (in)famous for quick cutaways and shock comedy in which no subject is safe. But in edging his way onto the screen himself in A Million Ways to Die in the West, he tries to balance the expected jokes about race, bodily fluids, and child brides with some actual romance. The animator-turned-actor may like pushing buttons, but in the end, he just wants to be loved.
Lorey Sebastian/Universal Pictures
The thing is, love or hate MacFarlane's brand of humor, his smug, brotastic persona is basically the opposite of lovable. In A Million Ways to Die in the West, it's a giant, self-created obstacle he doesn't manage to overcome. Whatever he might be like in person, MacFarlane's cultivated a permasmirk in public that serves as a pre-emptive response to anyone who dares get offended by one of his gags — like the one at the Oscars when he opened the night by singing that awful two-minute ode to seeing actresses' boobs, all in the guise of a slight against himself. (The joke is that it's an offensive joke, y'all!)
MacFarlane's a huge Hollywood success who heads up a billion-dollar franchise and has dated a string of starlets, but in A Million Ways to Die in the West, he's cast himself as a nice but weak-kneed type, a self-proclaimed nerd who gets dumped by his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) and requires multiple pep talks about how great he really is from his love interest Anna (Charlize Theron).
It's a jarring contrast, given the degree to which the movie's set up to not require him to act but to just be himself, with anachronistic, self-aware dialogue. (At one point, Albert notes he's not the hero; "I'm the guy in the crowd making fun of the hero's shirt.") A Million Ways to Die in the West suggests that, like fellow multihyphenate Kevin Smith, MacFarlane still sees himself as the scrappy underdog while, to much of the outside world, he looks more like the occasional bully.
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