I caught "The Magnificent Seven"at the drive in on Friday with my date. It was a wonderful early fall evening for a drive in movie; the cicadas in the woods still chirped, the night was cool, and the stars above were big and bright. I had no idea what to expect for "The Magnificent Seven", other than that it was a remake of an old time western and Chris Pratt was in it. Now I know that Chris Pratt’s career has evolved since his funnyman days on "Parks and Recreation," but a gunslinging cowboy is not the type of character I imagined Pratt excelling at. And sure enough, Pratt’s character was cheesy and cliche, almost to the point that it was comical.

In fact, the entire movie was cheesy and cliche. But I get the feeling that that’s what they were going for;I understand the whole concept of paying homage to the western flicks of old, but I quickly discovered that this was another level. They had it all: the lone rider (Denzel Washington) coming into town, looking for bounties; the rogue cowboy (Chris Pratt) smoking cigars and sipping whiskey as he cheats at cards; the old Civil War sharpshooter (Ethan Hawke) and his trusty sidekick (Byung-hun Lee); the Mexican outlaw (Manuel Garcia-Ruffo) with a bounty on his head; a ruthless behemoth of a man (Vincent D’Onofrio) who also happens to a soft-spoken Christian; the ostracized Native American (Martin Sensmeier) with a bone to pick for wicked white men. That’s seven, right? Yep. And thus rounds out our set of heroes, who must battle to the death to save a small town from the clutches of the greedy industrialist Bartholomew Bogue and his gang of hired thugs. If any movie personifies the spaghetti western stereotype, it’s this one.

I’ll just say this: if you came in expecting a nostalgic trip back to the old west, you got what you paid for. There were saloon shootouts, duels at high noon, two Comanche warriors fighting it out with their blades, and the best dang shootin’ west of the Mississippi. I think someone was even called “yellow-bellied” at one point. At face value, it was fun. There were drawn out gunfights and cheesy one-liners. But other than that, I had little connection to the characters, and I really couldn’t keep up with most of their names. However, I think this was the type of movie that you shouldn’t necessarily try to pick apart and analyze. About halfway through, I realized that. At some point, I embraced the cliches and gimmicks, and ended up enjoying the climactic battle, which did not disappoint. So if you’re looking for a flick without much artistic merit but with a whole lot of fun, look no further than The Magnificent Seven.