Ted Review

Director: Seth MacFarlane

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Seth MacFarlane, Jessica Stroup, Giovani Ribisi, Norah Jones, Patrick Stewart

Running time: 106 minutes

Certificate: 15

Synopsis: When John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) was a little boy, he wished for his teddy bear to come to life and be his friend forever. His wish came true, but as John grew up, so did Ted (voiced by Seth MacFarlane), into a pot smoking, foul mouthed slacker. John’s lifelong friendship with Ted is putting his relationship with Lori (Mila Kunis) under pressure. Can John grow up enough to leave his teddy bear behind?

Regarding comedy, Seth MacFarlane is known mainly for two things: bad taste and letting jokes run for far too long. Both apply to TED, which is a very funny film that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It also seems reluctant to give any jokes to women, but let’s start at the beginning.

The opening sequence is a masterclass in subversion, as it takes the codes and conventions of a Christmas family film and throws them back in your face. The music, mise en scene and warm narration lull you into a false sense of security which make the laughs so much bigger. Patrick Stewart’s narration, which bookends the movie, is probably the highlight of the picture, especially his line about Apache helicopters. But when your narrator is the best thing about your film, something maybe wrong.

When the eponymous teddy bear and his human pal grow up, we enter stoner-buddy-comedy territory, which combined with a seemingly endless supply of pop culture references, seems like something Kevin Smith could knock off in an afternoon. As the duo slack off and get high, John’s girlfriend Lori is the picture of professionalism, and wishes her man could be likewise. Soon John realises that he has to make some big changes to keep the love of his life, but can he cope without his teddy bear and finally grow up? MacFarlane’s decision to make Lori sympathetic and not some harpy who wants to keep her man away from his friends is a wise one, as she has every reason to dislike the way John acts. But poor Mila Kunis gets no jokes. At all. She is one of the funniest women in Hollywood right now and gets no funny dialogue, while all the gags go to John, Ted, John’s colleagues, the bloke who played Flash Gordon, Lori’s sleazy boss, the villainous father and son, every one gets to flex their comedy muscles except Kunis and the other female characters. This is endemic in Hollywood comedies, which seem to collectively think that films should have the men being funny while the women stand around tutting and rolling their eyes. The films attitude to women is best summed up in the one sequence which features only ladies when Lori arrives at work and talks to three female colleagues. Not only is this sequence dryer than a sand Martini due to lack of jokes, it also fails the Bechdel Test, which is;

1. A scene that has at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something other than a man.

They just talk about men, and then a man arrives and gets to be humorous. MacFarlane is funny, his script is funny, I just wish he would let the women in his film be funny.

To his credit, he gets a fine performance out of Wahlberg, and his voice work as Ted is as good as anything in his television shows. There’s a decent supporting cast, in particular Bill Smitrovich and Patrick Warburton, who get about three minutes screen time between them but have some great stuff to do. One of Warburton’s scenes involves the best cameo of the year, so keep an eye out for that. Speaking of cameos, Norah Jones pops up briefly for a Gervais/Merchant style self parody which leads into the mandatory MacFarlane musical number. That is just one of the MacFarlane tropes involved in TED, others being an overlong fight, way too many jokes about 9/11, cut away gags, mocking the afflicted and straight up racism. There’s a scene with a Chinese neighbour which makes Mickey Rooney’s ‘yellowface’ character in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961) look enlightened. Even the score by Walter Murphy sounds exactly like the music from Family Guy, giving the film a familiar yet derivative feel. Then we have the villains. Giovanni Ribisi is a hoot as a creepy, hipster Buffalo Bill type, but when we see that his son Robert (Aedin Mincks) is overweight, we know we’ll get a barrage of lazy fat jokes. But that’s the thing about MacFarlane, if you go in expecting offensive humour, then you’ll be satisfied.

The third act sees the film lose its way with a tacked on car chase and a finale that smacks of not knowing where its going. By the time the credits roll, none of the characters seem to have moved on in any significant way, making the experience of watching TED enjoyable if ultimately hollow. But if you like bad taste humour, this is well worth a go. I just wish Seth MacFarlane would let some of that humour come from female characters.

 TED is released on the 3rd of August.