A Million Ways to Die in the West (Seth MacFarlane, 2014)

[domino harvey]

Red Garters and Destry Rides Again fall under the "Western Musicals" clause (making the world safe for Calamity Jane and Annie Get Your Gun too)

[knives]

Fair, though I thought Destry Rides Again only had one song.

[domino harvey]

It has three musical numbers, if my personal records can be believed

[knives]

God enough for me. Either way I'm due for a re-watch which would be a more joyful experience than the film we should ostensibly be talking about. Which just reminds me of how this seems like a way too long version of one of those terrible Russ Myers nudie cuties.

[Murdoch]

In an opinion no one will cosign, Almost Heroes is my favorite Christopher Guest movie. I haven't seen it since high school though, so my opinion may have changed on that...

[Gregory]

I'll admit, or say gladly, that I've seen very few of the main category of comedy western I mentioned earlier (feature-length, live-action sound films). I watched Hot Lead and Cold Feet a few times when I was very little, too young to really follow the story, though I think I found some of the jokes and performances funny. Then ¡Three Amigos! was an elementary-school-age favorite, and my friends and I would sometimes quote lines from it while we were playing. Since then I've mostly avoided this type of film, which has been easy to do, though I did buy the Jayne Mansfield Collection, which included The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, and about all I could think was, Raoul Walsh directed this?

I've also seen Blazing Saddles and thought it was okay, though I don't remember it all that well and am not in a hurry to revisit it. And of course as a leftist, I believe it should be banned, and the government should go door-to-door to seize copies of it, etc.

[flyonthewall2983]

I liked Lightning Jack.

[knives]

And of course as a leftist, I believe it should be banned, and the government should go door-to-door to seize copies of it, etc.

What? Also speaking of weird bits of nonsense Aldrich's loopy The Frisco Kid is great I'm sure doesn't translate at all.

[Gregory]

I was referring to this which has gotten some mentions on the forum and is so ridiculous that I hope it will become a running joke about what passes for political commentary (and reporting; he calls his prediction a "cold naked fact") on the right.

[warren oates]

I like The Frisco Kid too. Anybody ever see the one John Sturges made, The Hallelujah Trail, which has been sitting in the middle of my Netflix queue for half a decade?

[Professor Wagstaff]

1994 was a particularly bad year for them, with Lightning Jack failing to reignite Paul Hogan's career and Wagons East ending John Candy's.

And City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold

On that note, I would like to throw in the first City Slickers movie as a good comedy western. I enjoyed the self-awareness of that film in how the character get to acknowledge the history of film and how it's influenced their ways of behaving on the cattle drive. Rewatching Red River the other day, I was reminded that City Slickers references/imitates the yeehaw scene directly because all those weekend warriors in the film wanted to be John Wayne as kids. I suppose one of the things that works in the film's favor is that the easy jokes about cowboy culture get dispensed in the first act and a lot of the humor builds from character rather than situation. The movie may not hold up as a western, but I think the script respects the genre in a way some of the previous examples don't.

[knives]

I was referring to this which has gotten some mentions on the forum and is so ridiculous that I hope it will become a running joke about what passes for political commentary (and reporting; he calls his prediction a "cold naked fact") on the right.

Ug, did not need to see that. Stupid people thinking they're stupid victims.

[domino harvey]

I like The Frisco Kid too. Anybody ever see the one John Sturges made, The Hallelujah Trail, which has been sitting in the middle of my Netflix queue for half a decade?

I have, it's awful (board search indicates I compared Hallelujah Trail to Doctor Doolittle and called it one of the worst movies I've ever seen, which indicates why I've blocked most of it from memory) . Frisco Kid has its moments but it's too long for a one joke movie

[Lemmy Caution]

Lemonade Joe!

[Feego]

What's the general consensus on McLintock? I've never seen it, but I understand it's a Western version of The Taming of the Shrew.

[kingofthejungle]

McLintock! isn't very good. It's less an adaptation of Taming of the Shrew than a feature-length western-movie commercial for reactionary conservatism. Wayne and O'Hara can fit a few good scenes into anything, but on the whole this is a pretty grating film. I'd suggest that its lapse into public domain (and the royalty free broadcasts that came with that) is the only reason it's still remembered.

[domino harvey]

MacFarlane may not be everyone's cup of comedic tea, but it's hard to argue with his philanthropy: He's matching donations to the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter so it can be sure to reach $5 million (5X its initial goal)

[jindianajonz]

Some would try to argue it (Though this admittedly isn't about MacFarlane being philantropic as much as its about the nature of the new Reading Rainbow)

[jindianajonz]

Some would try to argue it (Though this admittedly isn't about MacFarlane being philantropic as much as its about the nature of the new Reading Rainbow)

EDIT: It also seems that the kickstarter has tried to address some of these criticisms- the link Dom posted mentions bringing the show to smart phones and expanding a free-for-schools program.

[domino harvey]

Morbid curiosity and Black Friday dealz led me to checking this one out and despite its myriad problems, I have to admit it was… pretty good! Which in Comedy Western terms means it's a masterpiece. I say this with the caveat that there is a lot here which does not work: MacFarlane's lack of screen presence and recurrent schtick of drawing out the joke and making sarcastic asides, the too-cute moral superiority to the era, and the incessant sexual and bodily-function gags (I guess when trying to be the next Blazing Saddles you have to go big or go home on that film's worst qualities too). I watched the "Unrated" version but I suspect this film would be even better in the opposite end of the spectrum-- give me a TBS edit and it's almost surely an even better film.

MacFarlane to my surprise does appear to have familiarity with the genre he's mocking, and thus many of his barbs against the lesser-discussed conventions of the genre hit their mark with a pleasing frequency. Liam Neeson is perfect as the heavy and is the only one who plays his scenes like he's not in on the joke (which as a satire the film needed more of, to be sure). As for the speculation as to why Theron took this job instead of Inherent Vice, it's glaringly obvious: I don't think I've ever seen Theron in a film where she looks to be having this much fun. She probably ruins like one out of every four scenes she's in with breaking, but MacFarlane either directed her to do so or just left them in because it works for her character. Now, there is some glorious wish-fulfillment going on in this film with Theron all but throwing herself at MacFarlane, and the film veers a bit much into "nice guy" tropes with regards to his storyline, buuuuut I don't think that's too foreign a sentiment for a film that for all its foul-mouthed excesses is clearly steeped in the classical style.

Like MacFarlane's assorted TV works, the hit-miss ratio is pretty scattershot, but there's some big laughs in between the continued insistence that bodily fluids and jokes about fucking while making sure to say the word "fucking" are funny, and the film sort of sneaked up on me as and broke down my resistance as it went on. By the time it was over, that I would be speaking up in its favor came as a welcome shock. Despite the laundry list of "Well..."s, it's a Comedy Western that didn't make me want to blind myself, so really it deserves a congressional medal.

[djproject]

Seeing the title, I can't help but think of Homer Simpsons trying to get one of candy salesmen to demonstrate his wax lips really is "the candy of a thousand uses".