Double Feature Review: Maleficent & A Million Ways to Die in the West

So this week I checked out not one, but TWO films in one day. I haven't done that since I was out in South Dakota and saw The Expendables (2010, Dir. Sylvester Stallone) and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010, Dir. Edgar Wright). This time around I checked out two films that, well let's just say I didn't have the highest expectations on. The Angelina Jolie fantasy vehicle Maleficent, and the Seth MacFarlane western-comedy A Million Way to Die in the West. Both of these films I dislike immensely for different reasons and hopefully by the end of this review I will have come up with which takes the "honor" of taking the top spot of my least favorite list.

Maleficent
D: Robert Stromberg
W: Linda Woolverton
S: Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, Janet McTeer

Angelina Jolie stars as one of Disney's most famous villains in this re-imagining of the classic fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. Let me just get this out of the way, Angelina Jolie is awesome as Maleficent. That is when she is allowed to be Maleficent.

In this day and age people don't want clear cut heroes and villains, they want things to be a little more complex, and that's fine, but that is not what this movie does. All this movie does is switch the sides around. The movie ends up turning Maleficent into a poor misunderstood fairy who turned to evil because of one evil man (Copley) who wanted to be King so badly that he cut off her wings to get to the position. This is the short summary of my feelings towards this. This is the problem it wants to be a more in depth look at the character and make her and the situation more complex but instead it just boils it down the same basic good vs. evil roles, only this time Maleficent is the good guy and the man is the villain and has no real motivation for his actions and is just being portrayed as a villain. This was apparently NOT in Linda Woolverton's original script. The following is from the movie's Wikipedia page, 

"The original Linda Woolverton screenplay differs significantly from the final film. For example, on the original script, Stefan was the half-human, half-fairy bastard son of King Henry, and two characters called Queen Ulla and King Kinloch were the fairy queen and the fairy king of the Moors, and the aunt and uncle of Maleficent."

And this was changed why? This would've made things so much more interesting and complex. Also they took out any scene that had Peter Capaldi. WHAT?! How do you think he took it?

I couldn't resist.

This movie takes one of the most iconic villains of, not just Disney but of cinema, and gives it a rather lackluster and anti-climatic backstories and tries to pass it off as the REAL story of both the fairy tale but of Maleficent. So I can't give this a pass.


Onto the next film...

A Million Ways to Die in the West
D: Seth MacFarlane
W: Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, Wellesley Wild
S: Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman, Liam Neeson, Rex Linn

Seth MacFarlane, the man responsible for bringing us the tv show Family Guy now brings us his second feature. The film is about a sheep farmer (MacFarlane) who... actually to be honest I have no idea what the actual plot is. Why? Because there are a million different things going on here. The synopsis on IMDB says, "As a cowardly farmer begins to fall for the mysterious new woman in town, he must put his new-found courage to the test when her husband, a notorious gun-slinger, announces his arrival" but the first part of the film is him going up against his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend (Neil Patrick Harris). This movie is pretty much just Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Comedy... in the old west. It's every bad trait of recent piece of MacFarlane's work. Running gags that go nowhere, pointless pop culture references, extremely low brow sex jokes and worst of all overly improved lines that go no where and just states what the joke is and explains the joke.

Also one of the biggest problems with the film is that the lead character is so unlikable. All he does through out the whole is complain about how it sucks to live out in the old west and how lonely and sad he is. Seriously, this guy was about two steps away from complaining about how he was put in the friend zone... of the old west. What bothers me the most about it is that the characters in the movie say that he's a sweet guy and that he's nice. Um... pardon me? When has this guy displayed anything that can be considered nice? 

While I dislike this film a lot I will admit one thing, the music is amazing. The score by Joel McNeely is amazing, it reminds me of something that may have been composed by Elmer Bernstein. Also the song that Alan Jackson sings at the end is pretty good. 

I just wish we had a better western movie for it to be attached to. 

So which film is worse? I don't know I sadly haven't come to a decision. Maybe by end I'll come up with a "winner". 

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