Ted

In Ted, a little boy with no friends wishes that his Christmas teddy bear was real. The next morning, much to the denial of Ted’s owner, John, and John’s parents, Ted is a walking, talking, breathing thing. Ted soon becomes famous, hitting the late night show circuit, signing autographs – because, you know, he’s a goddamn talking teddy bear. Jump cut a few decades later and John and Ted have remained best friends, but instead of snowball fights and cartoons, they now opt for weed, booze and…cartoons.

As a grown man, John is played by Mark Wahlberg, who acts exactly like his character from The Other Guys, minus the anger. Ted is voiced by director Seth MacFarlane, and sounds exactly like his Peter Griffin from Family Guy. John’s live-in girlfriend is played my Mila Kunis, who acts exactly like her characters from Friends with Benefits, Extract, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Date Night and, well, you get it. Ted is basically the recycling of the talents of everyone involved. There’s nothing new or particularly hilarious, it’s a standard comedy romp that attempts to be different by having a teddy bear play one of the leads.

Plot? The understanding girlfriend grows increasingly tired that her longtime boyfriend is still best friends with a kind but crude teddy bear. Ted slowly begins to split the couple apart, and once things are pushed too far, he fights to bring them back together.

Look, I’m not trying to make slight of what Ted is attempting to be. It’s not trying to change the landscape of contemporary American comedy, it’s just trying to make people laugh for two hours. And, if you’re a remote fan of Family Guy (which I kind of am, sometimes), then MacFarlane’s wildly politically incorrect humor will have you rolling. Problem is, in Ted, MacFarlane saves all of the laughs for himself; the rest of the movie is stale in comparison.

Rare exceptions: Patrick Warburton’s exquisitely dry delivery of being a black-out drunk, and Joel McHale’s constant come-ons toward Kunis. A handful of spirited cameos attempt to make this movie better than it is, and by the end, I seriously doubt you’ll consider your money well spent.

Also note that I would be rating this movie slightly higher if it did not involve a pointless subplot in which Giovanni Ribisi and his overweight son attempt to kidnap Ted. That storyline is bafflingly out of place. It has nothing to do with anything and makes the film 20 minutes longer than it needs to be. D+