Review: Ted

Almost every kid has a best friend at some point in their lives. Even the unpopular kids who have a difficult time making friends will eventually find at least one. That's exactly what happens to the kid in the movie Ted. The only difference between him and everyone else is that his best friend is a teddy bear that can talk to him.

In Ted, John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) was an outcast growing up. No one else in his neighborhood wanted to hang out with him and he was always on his own. This was his everyday life until one lucky Christmas when he's given a stuffed teddy bear as a gift. Later that night he wishes that his new bear could actually come alive and be his best friend forever. To his surprise, his wish ends up coming true. For the next 27 years, John and Ted (Seth MacFarlane) develop a friendship that appears to be unbreakable. That is until other people begin to step into their lives.

There's no great story in Ted nor are there any real memorable qualities to be seen or experienced. You'll notice this very early on in the movie and then you'll realize that they're going to rely solely on the comedic aspects of the film to carry it. That approach to making movies is usually a bad idea and I'm sure that no one would recommend using this tactic. However, it does seem to work in this particular case as they use the comedy to cover the holes that might otherwise destroy any movie that wants to seen as credible.

The comedy in Ted is crude, offensive and continuous. They use things like race, religion, sex and even the refined and distinguished accents of the lovely ladies from Boston, Massachusetts to create funny moments. It starts right from the opening scene where we meet Ted and John for the first time and it continues all the way through the end. Most of it is comedy that's predicated on wordplay and verbal jokes. You're going to get a great deal of profanity and various types of foul language during this time, and if you don't mind that, you'll probably find much of it to be funny.

There's also some physical comedy here too. It's just not used as much as the other forms of comedy. It's just as effective though and it would have been nice to see more of it in multiple forms. I think that would have made what's seen on camera even funnier than it was, but it would have also given us more than what was shown in the trailers. I'm saying that, because most of the physical stuff that's in Ted can also be seen in trailer. So if you haven't seen any of the trailers and you want to be surprised, don't watch the trailers ahead of time.

As a whole, Ted is a raunchy and outrageous movie, but just not to the extent that I had originally anticipated. While it did push the limits when ever it got the chance, I actually wanted it to go quite a bit farther than it did in some circumstances. I mean I liked it overall, but it didn't live up to my seemingly lofty expectations. It's a funny, goofy and at times outlandish movie that I can see people liking overall, but I would have liked it if they would have went harder than they did.

I think Ted is a movie that sees its Writer/Director Seth MacFarlane just having fun with the movie making process. It looks like he and the others involved are just using almost everything they can think of to make the audience laugh and nothing is ever taken seriously. They're not worried about substance, a good story or even good acting for that matter. It's rare for a movie of any genre that's done like this to be any good, but you can say that this may be the reason why Ted actually succeeds enough to get a passing grade in my eyes.

Score: 3/5

Rating: R

Director: Seth MacFarlane

Cast:
Mark Wahlberg
Seth MacFarlane
Mila Kunis
Joel McHale
Giovanni Ribisi
Jessica Barth
Patrick Stewart
Brett Manley

Film Length: 105 minutes

Release Date: June 29, 2012

Distributor: Universal Pictures

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