A Million Ways To Laugh In The West

As I noted in my blog on “The Long Riders”, I’m not much of a fan of westerns.   However, here are a pair of western comedies – a genre so sparse I can identify both films which qualify as such.   I don’t think of “Back to the Future Part III” as a comedy.

A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014). This is Seth MacFarlane’s take on westerns, appropriately set in the right time (1882) and place (somewhere out west – Wyoming?  Utah?).  

Albert (MacFarlane) is a mild-mannered sheep herder whose girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) dumps him because he’s a bit too mild-mannered.  She immediately hooks up with the local mustache merchant, Foy (Neil Patrick Harris).   Fortunately for Albert, a mysterious woman, Anna (Charlize Theron) takes it upon herself to coach Albert in gunfighting so he’ll have a ghost of a chance of surviving a duel with Foy to occur in a week.   Meanwhile, equally mild-mannered Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) counts the days until his fiancé Ruth (Sarah Silverman) marries him and then shifts her carnal attention to him instead of the incessant array of customers – she’s a whore.  Aside from Albert, he's about the only one in town not romping in bed with her.

Naturally there’s a showdown by the end of the film, and along the way we get lots of laughs.   Perhaps the John Wayne fans of my dad’s generation might not be laughing too hard, but my peers and younger will probably appreciate MacFarlane’s humor.

Incidentally, the title comes from an ongoing diatribe Albert has about the state of affairs in the Wild West in 1882.  Apparently MacFarlane is upset that so many contemporary Americans wax poetic about this period of American history, and damn it, MacFarlane is going to set the record straight!    It was a dangerous, nasty time!  A FOX animator/humorist with zero gun skills would last…. 5 seconds?  Maybe less….in such an environment.  Poor baby.  The proper solution for Albert – MacFarlane’s 1882 equivalent - would have been to sell his farm and move to San Francisco, New York or Chicago, somewhere he could survive on his humor skill set without worrying about gun fights.

Blazing Saddles (1974).  Here’s the only other Western comedy I know of, and it’s fairly famous - and it's even celebrating its fortieth anniversary.

Out in the west, the railroad is coming to a small town where everyone’s name is Johnson.   The Attorney General Hedley – NOT Hedy – Lamarr (Harvey Korman – missing his surgically attached sidekick Tim Conway) plots to clear the locals out of town so he can snatch it up and make a profit.  He sends a black man, Bart (Cleavon Little) to the town as their sheriff, knowing the locals won’t accept a man of that race in that position.  Bart’s assisted by the fastest shot in the West, the “Waco Kid”, Jim (Gene Wilder).   Eventually Bart wins the townspeople’s affection and they cook up a plot to defeat Lamarr and his army of malcontents – quite literally, as it includes a squad of WWII German soldiers. 

Although the n-word is heavily abused here, it’s really meant to ridicule racism.   Farting cowboys?  Got it.  “Mongo just a pawn in the game of life”?  Yes.   Sultry German songstress, Lili Von Shtupp (Madeline Kahn)?  Yep.  And because Mel Brooks apparently couldn’t figure out how to end the film, he broke down the fourth wall that Frank Underwood talks through and pushed the whole shebang out of the filming lot and into downtown Los Angeles.   Comic genius?  Maybe not.  But certainly entertaining.  And he beat “Holy Grail” by a year in the “absurd ending” department.