f13.net

Spiritual successor to Blazing Saddles? Yes please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgQzWrrpRb4

Well that might be a stretch... just a wee bit.

I love Blazing Saddles personally but let's not put it on an untouchable pedestal here.  I doubt this movie will touch on serious social issues like racism so yes in that regard it may not have the gravitas. Though it looks like it's following the same comedic formula of a bawdy comedy set in in the old west with modern vernacular.

Your second sentence is why you shouldn't compare the two.

So it's basically a fucking Wild West episode of Family Guy in live-action where we get to watch Seth McFarlane mug for 2 hours?

No.

Just a wee.

I'm still fairly confident that I'll come out of this laughing, and that's all I want out of most comedies.

So it's 'Ted' with cowboys and without the bear.   :oh_i_see:

I can see it being a harmless fun.

1) They should have un-bleached the teeth for added realism!

2) Sarah Silverman as whore made me snicker.

Would be better without Seth. 

I laughed out loud. Not at the trailer, but at reading that text after watching the trailer.
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His mugging does seem really out of place for the setting, and not in a good way. I heard Ted was good so I watched that and found it dreadfully boring.

Agree with this.

It's Neeson Season.

Literally came back to type this.

He does project an aura of smug and unlikable.

He'd probably be great playing a douchey 50s actor. Or a douchey old-timey milk man.

To be fair, I could watch Charlize Theron all day.

This has a few good people in supporting roles. Ok, two: Neeson and Theron. Clearly they needed to make mortgage payments. What pissed me off the most about the trailer though was it instantly made me want to see Nesson as an old west outlaw in a real Western.

I'd like Neeson to play the Gunslinger if they ever decide to make the books a show.

This looks fantastically watchable. Ted was not.

Oh, well, If Neeson is in it, it's going to be a true classic.

Saw this Friday night.

It was funny but it's no Blazing Saddles. McFarlane needs help with pacing and direction as it felt uneven and dragged at times. He also needed to commit to his subtext of, "Stop Romanticizing the West, assholes, it sucked!" a bit more. If you want to critique a thing like the US' love with a place that never existed, do it fully. Sure was white with a cast full of perfect teeth in that shithole of a town.

The jokes were your typical McFarlane fare. If you don't like them you'll not like the movie. If you do you'll laugh a lot - when he's not trying to fit a romance story or a western Drama in. (My uneven comment.)  There were a few jokes that I can't remember but only a few of us laughed at because they were smart jokes.  My showing was filled with brodudes who guffawed at the sheep piss and race jokes but didn't at the jabs at Native displacement or Chinese exploitation.

The characters were great, though it felt like Neeson and his gang took it a little too seriously. I'd rather have seen them all camp it up a bit. Harris sure as hell did and stole several scenes because of it. McFarlane's character came across as a bit of a douche so I couldn't fully get behind him as a hero. It felt too much like Brian from Family Guy was onscreen.

Also, fair warning, it's a little quiet. Rummaging for popcorn echoed in the theater any time Theron and McFarlane were talking on screen. It's a nice change from the INCEPTION HORN and LOUD NOISES of most movies but took me a bit to get used to.

The musical numbers, as one would expect from McFarlane, were catchy and really great. I still have the mustache song echoing in my head.

In all I'd give it a 7.5/10. I don't regret watching it, it was better than most but I won't buy it or insist anyone has to watch it. I also felt it was a step or two behind Ted.

Has popular culture romanticized the Old West much in the 40 years since Blazing Saddles came out? It made sense to tare down the myth back then because people who were old enough to watch Blazing Saddles in the theater had likely grown up watching John Wayne movies and such. Westerns have dropped off quite a bit in popularity since then and most modern day examples from Deadwood back to Unforgiven have been very non-romanticized. At times it felt like McFarlane was arguing that the sky is blue. Most of us know that the Old West would have been a shitty time and place to live. He should have tried deconstructing something that's actually popular right now.

Depends on the part of the country you're in. From what I can tell it's romanticized heavily in the South and Southwest still, but that's 2nd hand experience talking there.

Yeah, that drove me *nuts* when I was in Mississippi in my twenties.  I grew up in Montana, my youth included actually being a ranch hand (riding fence, branding calves, etc.) and even riding in a rodeo a couple of times.  And I didn't consider myself a 'cowboy' (which actual ranchers consider 'Hollywood shit').  But everywhere I looked were dudes dandied up in jeans, pretty boots, and pickup trucks with flawless paint and chrome that called themselves 'Cowboys' because they listened to 'Country-Western' and had seen every John Wayne movie.  Even though they'd never actually seen a steer (might not even know what that was).

--Dave

Texas romanticizes the cowboy way like crazy, and I grew up in a upper class suburb. Guys would go out of their way to wear Wranglers with the dip cup and their hats while driving jacked up trucks. These were kids of doctors and lawyers who wouldn't know how to brand a steer any more than change their own oil.

Ken Levine (http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2014/06/rants-raves-and-rip.html):

It didn't do that terribly at the box office. It'll at least turn a profit, I think.

It might break even if it's lucky. Considering Ted did over $500 million worldwide, it's pretty terrible by comparison.


I'm not sure how many of those people are going to watch this movie though, and I'm sure many of them already understand that living conditions back then were much worse than they are now. I still believe this movie at least a couple decades too late for the point it's trying to make.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=millionwaystodie.htm
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

$28 Million and was #3 last weekend. It'll have a huuuuuuuuuuuge drop off this weekend.  It's never good when you're beaten by the 2nd week of a movie and barely beat the 3rd week of another in the Summer season.

I really liked Ted.  I thought it was one of the better movies of the year - even though it had some bad problems.

I have no interest in this film based on previews and reviews.  It also makes me fear that Ted 2 will be a #2 that stains my affection for the first film.

The romanticization of the west in movies stopped being the dominant portrayal in the mid-60s with the advent of major spaghetti westerns. This movie is like 50 years too late.

Mcfarlane has his comedy set in in past reference mode and can rarely get out of that.   I had high(possibly unrealistic) hopes for this movie after Ted but Seth seems to has reached the plateau of what he is capable of comedically.

It's like none of you have watched the last 5 seasons of Family Guy, or for that matter, any episode of American Dad.

Why on earth would you?

Exactly my point, and exactly what I thought about both this movie and Ted.  :why_so_serious:

I thought Ted was pretty good. Of course it should be noted that out of the group of people I watched it with, I was the only one who had actually seen the 80's Flash Gordon movie (multiple times in fact, partly for the Queen soundtrack)

I think American Dad is pretty funny...

Totally.  I watch American Dad and Bob's Burgers.  I can't watch Family Guy and Simpsons anymore.

Ted was actually good, worth a watch at least but I think it's because while still very "family guy humor" it was reigned in due to being the first movie.

Ted I enjoyed.

Can't stand family guy, and never really understood why I didn't like it until Cartman explained it to me.

Ted was a great movie. I enjoyed watching it. Simple fun. This movie wasn't as good, but there were moments that I laughed my ass off.

I'm also in love with Charlize Theron.