OVERVIEW: Sparks and bullets fly between a gun-shy sheep farmer and a beautiful sharpshooter in A Million Ways to Die in the West, an outrageously irreverent comedy coming exclusively to Digital HD on September 9, 2014 and DVD and Blu-ray™ Combo Pack on October 7, 2014, from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Coinciding with the digital release date of the film will be a deluxe version of the soundtrack album, featuring additional score cues by composer Joel McNeely. This album will be available exclusively through iTunes. 

Seth MacFarlane, creator of “Family Guy” and the blockbuster comedy feature film Ted, directs produces, co-writes and stars in this sweet and saucy film packed with laughs, lunacy and just the right amount of romance. A never-before-seen UNRATED version of the film, featuring 18 additional laugh-packed minutes is available exclusively on Blu-ray™ and Digital HD. A Million Ways to Die in the West DVD and Blu-ray™ Combo Pack each offer hilarious bonus content, including deleted scenes, alternate takes, feature commentary and much more. 

SYNOPSIS: When Albert Stark (Seth MacFarlane) loses his fickle fiancée (Amanda Seyfried) to a mustachioed dandy (Neil Patrick Harris), he rebounds hard with Anna (Charlize Theron), a gorgeous gunslinger new to his Old West town. What he doesn’t know is that Anna’s ex, Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), is the most dangerous desperado on the horizon and he’s on his way to reclaim his gal—whatever it takes. With MacFarlane’s bold and bawdy humor and a host of surprise celebrity cameos, A Million Ways to Die in the West will have audiences splitting their britches! 

FILM REVIEW: While it might be a little premature and a bit of wishful thinking to expect MacFarlane (a pedigree writer, director, animator, producer and principal voiceover artist of Family Guy, American Dad!) to deliver at the level of classic Mel Brooks’ or current Quentin Tarantino’s style, “A Million Ways” fails to deliver period! It doesn’t even measure up to its own creator’s high standards for nose-thumbing disrespect, that we’ve all come to know him for. From mega hits like “Family Guy” to “Ted,” we’ve come to expect the 40-year-old wunderkind to go for broke, with his first lead role in a feature film; however, with this latest effort he fails to deliver even the slightest pretentious laugh-out-loud. What you don’t expect from MacFarlane is a genteel, insubstantial genre parody that, even with its somewhat expected parade of sex and fart jokes; it struggles to keep audiences engaged on any level. But then again that’s exactly what MacFarlane serves up in this 116 minute excuse for a comedy. 

With watching “A Million Ways,” it sorta’ feels like MacFarlane rightfully fell in love with the idea of doing a comic western (which, arguably is long overdue in Hollywood) and decided he’d worry about the particulars as the filming trudged along, resulting in a disjointed series of comic sketches linked together by a beautiful set of sequences of Monument Valley panoramas. One can only imagine the story pretty much took a backseat to the star-power that signed up for this project. We see the likes of Liam Neeson (Taken I,II,III), Charlize Theron (Prometheus, 2012), Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother, TV series) and loads of cameos by some of Hollywood’s most relevant. With that, this flick showed the potential of achieving greatness on many levels, however, it just simply serves to frustrate, more than anything else. A farce, by all meanings of the word, is what we have here!

The bottom line here is that the only two good things this latest MacFarlane effort, has going for itself, is the all-star lineup (Minus Seth MacFarlane) and the beautiful panoramic vistas that would make any decent western movie producers envious. I can only say thanks for giving us great actors with great backdrop vistas and loads of nothing-ness to justify spending our money. My advice here is for MacFarlane to, “stick to what you know and leave the leading man role to the pros!!” You are not close to being ready yet! Needless to say, I’d be considered very generous to give, this latest effort, two and a half stars out of five. It is certainly not worth spending time nor money on, not even as a DVD rental. 

BLU-RAY: The film is presented in widescreen in a 2.40:1 aspect ration preserving its theatrical format. The picture is just flawless. Not only the picture looks great in this release, also the sound it is good, a 5.1 Dolby Digital in English that provides a good complement to the picture. It also includes  English, French  and Spanish subtitles.

VIDEO:
Widescreen (2.40:1) 16x9

AUDIO:
DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1/DVS DD 2.0 (English)

Subtitles - English Spanish French

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Blu-ray™ unleashes the power of your HDTV and is the best way to watch movies at home, featuring 6X the picture resolution of DVD, exclusive extras and theater-quality surround sound.

DVD offers the flexibility and convenience of playing movies in more places, both at home and away.

DIGITAL HD with UltraViolet™ lets fans watch movies anywhere on their favorite devices. Users can instantly stream or download.

Alternate Ending 

Deleted/Extended/Alternate Scenes 

Once Upon a Time in A Different West - A behind the scenes look at what it took to pull all the pieces together 

The Good, The Bad and the Increasingly Decreasing Population – Learn about some of the familiar faces that pop into Old Stump including one of the greatest cameos of them all, a visit from Christopher Lloyd aka Doc Brown.

Unrated commentary with director/producer/co-writer Seth MacFarlane, co-writers and executive producers Alec Sulkin & Wellesley Wild and star Chalrlize Theron 

Gag Reel 

A Fistful of Dirt…In Your Mouth – Follow the production through all the shooting locations 

Feature Commentary