Review: Ted 2

Ted 2
Cert: 15 / 116 mins / Dir. Seth MacFarlane / Trailer



Well, that wasn't awful. Damning with faint praise from the off, certainly, but I sat in Screen 5 tonight with apprehension and experience as my viewing partners*¹, and despite giving Ted 2's predecessor cautious approval, I was less enthused by its spiritual successor. But no matter, because watching a cuddly bear say 'fuck' with a beer in one hand and a bong in the other is still funny, right?

Okay, so you've watched the trailer. That's the film, but with more swearing. The first act sets up a courtroom sequence, a road-trip and a visit to NY Comic-Con, over the course of which Ted has to prove he's 'human' to win the legal right to stay with his wife, Tami-Lyn (whose window-dressing role replaces that of Mila Kunis, who gets verbally written out in the film's first scene*²). To Ted 2's credit, there is more than just the stoner-jokes of the first movie, even if the first half of the script still confuses fuck-words for jokes with alarming regularity. Sadly, Seth MacFarlane is still struggling to write an evenly-paced screenplay, and his Ted sequel is little more than a few set-pieces punctuated with shoehorned-in comedy sketches, many of which fizzle out without a punchline (and around half of the ones which do have an ending still miss their target).

Continuity-nerds may be slightly irked by the number of inter-shot blunders, of props and postures changing position dramatically as the camera switches between characters, suggesting many, many ad-libbed takes and thousands of feet of footage on the cutting-room floor. Also occasionally sprinkled over this is Seth's old Family Guy trick of coming up with the most questionable phrase to put in a script (instead of a punchline), then inserting it anyway on the basis that he's the writer, star and director so who's going to tell him that having one of your black cast-members saying the n-word (oh, twice) still isn't advisable when there's no actual point to it?

But on the plus side (and there is a plus side), the animation of the bear is still absolutely flawless, and while MacFarlane's characterisation is still essentially 'drunk/stoned Peter Griffin', Ted's mannerisms match the voicework perfectly. Most importantly, the film features regular chuckles, a laugh every ten minutes or so and three or four of those are real guffaws. The courtroom scene*³ and Comic-Con sequence are quite marvellous; the rest is fairly amusing filler. Only you can decide if that's worth a trip to the cinema.

Seriously though, what's with the 'Sam Jackson being the black guy from every movie' gag? Everyone knows that mantle belongs more to Morgan Freeman who, ironically(?), appears in Ted 2 in that very perfunctory role. I honestly get the impression his lawyer character was written for Jackson who turned the role down (and it'd certainly make the joke about 'Samantha Jackson' work a lot better).

There's also a scene at the very end of the credits for those of you who want to wait for an extra five minutes. It's not a biggie, but a nice callback to an earlier, rather bizarre, gag.

Not really.



Probably best for a rental with a few beers.



That's a tricky question given the film features Mark Wahlberg, but I'll say no.



Oh, probably.



Not really.



There certainly is (Comic-Con brawl, bold as brass).



As well as a a plethora of visual references in the NY Comic-Con sequence, Ted 2 features an appearance from none other than Qui-Gon Jinn himself, Liam Neeson, and Patrick Warburton, the voice of G2-4T in Disneyland's Star Tours: The Adventures Continue.







*¹ I didn't, really. The seats around me were empty. Very few people in my town give a shit about this film. Then again, it was a 20:15 exclusive-preview for a movie which opens at 12:40 the next day. Not exactly 'test-audience' stuff.

*² During which Wahlberg's character complains that Kunis' character was "trying to change him". Which, as I noted at the time, is the polar-fucking-opposite of the film that I watched.

*³ By which I mean the first courtroom scene. The one with the jokes in. Not the second one where MacFarlane has realised that he's got to wrap up the film as well as get his money's worth from Morgan Freeman, so just has him deliver a standard courtroom monologue without wit, charm or indeed comedy, because there just isn't time for that shit.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Ted (Spoilers)

CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.



Ted (Spoilers)
106 mins / Dir. Seth McFarlane

I wasn't sold by the trailer, as I'm wary of a Seth McFarlane vehicle. That said, I've heard great, great things by people who went to the preview showings the other week, which only serves to make me even more cautious…



The Plot: A young boy's Christmas wish is granted as his teddy bear comes to life and a lifelong friendship is formed. But how long can a boy be a boy, and what happens when it's time to let go..?

The Good: Hats off to Wahlberg and Kunis for playing it so straight. Seriously. Both performers are seriously under-rated, if only because they frequently seem to star in films that demand so little of them. Added to their performance is the marvellous CGI of Ted (and mostly great voicework of McFarlane, even if he's just being a dialled-down Peter Griffin), and the film's masterstroke: That no-one questions the existence of a living teddy bear. Shock? Yes. Disbelief? No. It's a bold move, and it pays off massively as the audience don't doubt it, either. The viewers aren't allowed to connect too closely with Wahlberg's John or his bear, because they're both portrayed as being likeable enough to lead the film, but flawed enough that you don't mind when they're beating the shit out of each other. As a film, it's very likeable, but I had a hard time loving it.

Despite what I'm going to go on and grumble about, there are lots of laugh-out-loud moments in Ted. Maybe not enough to justify over 100 minutes, but it's frequently funny when it's not trying too hard. The cameo by Ryan Reynolds is underplayed to perfection, and even the overworked Sam Jones appearance still holds its own. It's a shame that a premise as innovative as this is mired by such a formulaic plot, but it is still better than a lot of things I've seen this year. I just feel like it needed more work and less incidental characters.

The Bad: You know how certain episodes of Family Guy aren't as funny as the others for some reason, and you get the impression that Seth McFarlane's sat there and thought 'hmm, I can't think of anything intrinsically funny for this part of my comedy show, and I seem to have painted myself into a corner. I know, I'll just have one of my characters say fuck for no real reason, or be gratuitously offensive in the hopes that the nervous-laughter of the audience is confused for amusement…'?

The first half of the film features lots of that. After a deceptively sweet setup, the film shifts into gross-out-comedy™ mode, and while we're assured that John and the titular Ted are besties, we don't really see much evidence of that outside of them sitting on the sofa getting wasted all the time. Don't get me wrong, I get that aspect of it, but all the character development is saved for the second half, which co-incidentally is when the swearing is reined back. It's not that they can't work together, just that McFarlane can't pull it off. 60% of Ted is brilliantly inventive, the other 40% is the most lazy clichéd writing I've seen in a long time. That said, I did guffaw when Wahlberg punched that kid. Trust me, it's funny.

The Ugly: They all live happily ever after in a house just like at the start. Do you see? All Mila Kunis' character had to do was stop whining and accept that things were great the way they were! But would she listen? No. Still, she learned in the end that it was her attitude that had to change. Tch, women eh?*

Worth £8+? I don't think it's really a cinema movie. More of a DVD-night with beer. Lots of beer.

After the credits: Nothing to see, here. As soon as the names hit the screen, you can move along, move along.



An interesting and occasionally beautiful second-draft. It'll be great when it's finished.

* That's the film that I saw, anyway.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.

• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.