Ted

My Grade:  B+

I am not a fan of Family Guy.  So, when I saw previews for Seth MacFarlane’s Ted, I was pretty skeptical.  But, then I heard some friends and colleagues tell me how funny it is.  I still wasn’t sure whether to believe them, until they said “And it has a lot of heart.”  That made me really not believe them because I have seen Family Guy and one thing it doesn’t have much of is heart.  So I had to see this thing for myself to see if they were right.  And they sort of were.

Ted starts out as a touching tale of a young man whose Christmas wish comes true and he ends up with a best friend that happens to be a living teddy bear.  It seems so innocent at the start… but then Ted grows up.  Ted sounds exactly like Peter from Family Guy (I know MacFarlane voices them both, but I was hoping for something a little different) and has a filthy mouth.  Oh yea, and he’s pretty funny when he isn’t falling back on fart jokes.  But the real story is about John (Mark Wahlberg) and his inability to grow up and have an adult relationship with the lovely Lori (Mila Kunis).

  

The story, although pretty predictable, does venture into romantic comedy territory between John and Lori, but also between Ted and John.  These two simultaneously occurring rom-coms actually make for a pretty interesting dichotomy and allow us, as viewers, to see the similarities as well as the differences between the male friendship relationship and the dating relationship.

  

The acting is not bad or good in this film.  The chemistry between Kunis and Wahlberg is alright, MacFarlane’s Ted is good enough, and the supporting characters aren’t anything to write home about.  I don’t really think it’s because of the actors, though.  I feel like the characters are rather weak in the film which doesn’t allow for the impressive acting performances you may hope for.  But one person does shine:  Giovanni Ribisi as the evil and VERY weird Donny.  It’s not that his character was extremely three dimensional or anything, but he was so strange and Ribisi pulled off the strange superbly.  Oh, and look for a great performance by Ryan Reynolds… I’m pretty sure he doesn’t speak.

The most impressive thing about this film is how good Ted looks and moves.  CGI has gotten so good these days that making a walking/talking teddy bear shouldn’t be too hard, but some of the things they do with this CGI teddy are impressive.  The most impressive being a huge fight scene that destroys a hotel room.  I’m not sure how they went about filming that, but kudos to them.

Overall, this review probably makes you think I wouldn’t have given the film a B+, but I did because I was very entertained and laughed regularly throughout the film despite its overuse of fart jokes.  It’s not a film that I will remember for years to come, but it was good for some passing laughs and a couple of decent one-liners.  And, of course, it’s worth seeing Mila Kunis in any film!