People think that the genre of comedy westerns contains just a handful of films, but the comedic western goes back to the dawn of cinema including 1918’s Out West and 1922’s The Paleface, with movies featuring comedy legends from Bob Hope (The Paleface) to the Marx Brothers (Go West) to Don Knotts (The Shakiest Gun in the West). More recent comedic westerns include Back to the Future Part III, City Slickers, The Lone Ranger, Lust in the Dust and Three Amigos. There are even animated comedic westerns starring Bugs Bunny, Speedy Gonzales, Fievel and Rango.

And then there is the benchmark for all western comedies that have come since 1974 – Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles. Brooks’ film satirized racism that was often obscured in Hollywood films about the American West, and was full of anachronisms from a reference to the Wide World of Sports to the German army of World War II. The film literally broke the fourth wall by spilling onto the Warner Brothers lot to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, And, of course, there was the infamous campfire scene which set the standard for fart jokes.

Now, Seth MacFarlane has thrown his cowboy hat into the ring with his own take on the anachronistic western comedy, A Million Ways To Die in the West. MacFarlane plays Albert, a very modern man in the west of 1882 who hates everything about living in the west and all the dangers that life entails. He’s a not very successful sheep farmer who loses his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) to Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), owner of the Moustachery (where you’re not a man unless you have a moustache). Albert’s best friend Edward (Giovanni Ribisi) is dating local “working girl” Ruth (Sarah Silverman), who has sex with at least 15 men a day, but is saving herself for marriage before doing the deed with Albert (because that would go against their Christian beliefs).

Albert is ready to leave town to head to the big city of San Francisco, but Anne (Charlize Theron) rides into town one day, and Albert decides that life there may not be so bad after all once Anna becomes more than just a friend to him … except he doesn’t know she’s already married to ruthless gunslinger Clinch (Liam Neeson) who won’t take too kindly to another man kissing his wife.

A Million Ways To Die in the West has a pretty simple set-up, but it rarely delivers on the big laughs expected from the previews. In fact, most of the best gags are in the previews (including the giant block of ice, which does end up being much more explicit and hilarious in the film), and for some reason one of the best “surprises” in the movie as already been blown in the latest round of ads (which I won’t spoil here because it was still a surprise to me when I saw it). There are a couple of funny, if nonsensical cameos (keep your eyes peeled for Ryan Reynolds, Gilbert Gottfried, John Michael Higgins and Ewan McGregor), some gorgeous scenery and nice production design, but the movie just doesn’t have any real laugh-out-loud moments.

MacFarlane makes a good leading man, but I never once believed he was from 1882. The language and the anachronistic references just put the film too firmly in the present. It’s like, perhaps, The Village where the modern world was just right past those shrubs. Neil Patrick Harris probably has some of the funniest scenes in the movie … and then he has to go embarrass himself in a gag apparently meant to top the Blazing Saddles campfire scene, but just a bit more disgustingly visceral. What does work is the chemistry between MacFarlane and Theron, who gives a terrific, heartfelt performance right out of another movie. It’s almost as if MacFarlane decided to sacrifice the laughs for the budding romance and ultimate showdown to help his character grow. The movie isn’t about anything like Blazing Saddles was, but it does include one racist gag merely for shock value.

I really wanted to go into A Million Ways To Die in the West and laugh my ass off, but I didn’t. I laugh more at the scenes in the TV commercials … many of which aren’t even in the actual movie! And I laughed much more, and harder, at MacFarlane’s Ted which suit his modern, pop culture sensibilities much better. Comedies live or die on laughter, and unfortunately, the lack of laughs here is just another one of those million ways to die on the big screen.

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