Seth MacFarlane’s Ted is exactly what you’d expect. A tedious documentary about motivational speaking…
In his first feature, MacFarlane sticks to what he knows and basically delivers one big live-action Family Guy episode, just without any of the Family Guy characters. The one cartoonish element he keeps is Ted himself, a Christmas present that magically comes to life to provide young John with his only friend. The toy becomes a national sensation but after a while his fame results in him becoming jaded and Teddy grows up into a foul-mouthed, layabout adult. And his friendship with John is also keeping the now going-nowhere 30-something (played by Mark Wahlberg) from reaching his full potential.
As a character, Ted is fully realised. The CGI blends in extremely well and that the character works is a testament to the director’s eminent skill of switching between the absurd and everyday until you don’t know which is which anymore. Voiced by MacFarlane, Ted is hilarious and filthy and so much fun. He gets all the best jokes since he’s the most obvious one to mine laughs from, but Wahlberg is good too, comfortable in this kind of less demanding role where he can just be a regular guy. Without trying too hard as in The Other Guys, he shows that he is actually understatedly funny. Mila Kunis, who plays his girlfriend, Lori, is unfortunately just plot fodder to put pressure on the Ted-John friendship, and she’s grossly underused for someone with her charm. There’s also a sort of unsettling turn from Giovanni Ribisi, which turns to hilarious in the final act as he carries out a dance routine that you won’t be able to look away from, among other things. Also Joel McHale does the job as the sleazy boss trying to steal away Lori from right under John’s nose. Oh, and there’s a terrific cameo by Norah Jones. I would never have guessed she’d be up for that!
MacFarlane really does have a gift for comedy. I mean there’s a lot of inappropriate race stuff and drug humour and all the puerile material that made us fall in love with Family Guy in high school and university. But he has a sharp eye and mixes it up like a pro. There’s a lot of clever stuff too, or at least what you’d call alternative and less one-liney. Unexpected. He can do offbeat as well as the sudden zingers. Like John and Ted’s Flash Gordon obsession, which is great, and the one about a co-worker who might or might not be gay, which is just in the background but genius in a way. Or the Tom Skerritt joke that runs through till the end. Oh, and the trademark violence, which is bewildering but still funny.
Anyway, it’s not just random jokes picked by manatees either. To some extent we are made to care about what happens to John and Ted’s relationship, and if MacFarlane can drop some of the silliness and actually be brave enough to write a more “real” screenplay, something that takes itself just slightly more seriously, he could find himself being a neat complement to Judd Apatow or someone like that. Ted though, as silly as it is, deserves to be rewatched several times, and after none of the myriad jokes elicit more than half-assed chuckles anymore, it’ll still be a pretty pleasant experience all the same.
SA Movie Guy 