Ted
Lonely
and friendless, all 8-year-old John wants for Christmas is a friend. Wishing on a star, John wishes his new
Teddy Ruxpin-style teddy bear was alive and, when he wakes the next morning his
wish has been granted, much to his parents’ consternation (Dad’s first
instincts are to get his gun). The
pair become a media sensation and Ted becomes the darling of the talk
shows. But like all child stars,
Ted’s star burns bright but burns out quick.
Fast
forward 28 years and John (Mark Wahlberg) is 35, stuck in a dead-end job at a
car rental showroom, while Ted (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) is a foul-mouthed,
hooker-chasing pothead. They’re
still best buds but going nowhere, spending their nights (and some of their
days) sat on the couch, smoking dope and watching 1980’s camp sci-fi classic
Flash Gordon. But John’s loving
and tolerant girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) thinks it’s time he grew up, got rid
of the teddy bear and married her.
So Ted takes his first tentative steps into the big, bad world alone, finding
a job and an apartment. Reduced to bagging groceries in a supermarket, Ted
comments: “I’m a former celebrity in a minimum wage job. This must be how the cast of Different Strokes feels. Well, the ones that are alive
anyway.” But can Ted and John’s
friendship survive? And can John
really make it without his Ted?
Ted is a one-joke movie. Here’s the joke; there’s this
35-year-old party animal teddy bear who drinks, smokes, swears, takes drugs,
shags hookers and says every obnoxious, vulgar, hilarious, un-PC thing you wish
you had the balls to say. And he
sounds like Peter from Family Guy. That’s it! That’s the whooooole movie! It’s one very filthy joke repeated over
and over again. But it’s a
pant-wettingly funny joke. Lewd,
crude and unashamedly offensive, Ted will leave you gasping for breath. The plot may be predictable but it
doesn’t matter; the bromance between Wahlberg’s John and MacFarlane’s Ted has
an easy chemistry that keeps you watching.
A
gifted comic actor, Wahlberg never quite plays straight man to the cute, vulgar
teddy bear, bringing a hapless, befuddled, childlike innocence to John that’s
sweet and funny while MacFarlane, though essentially just giving us a darker
version of his Family Guy schtick, brings a vulnerability to the talking soft
toy that just sneaks up on you. As
Lori, Mila Kunis (surely the one girl in the world who probably would put up
with her boyfriend having a stoner teddy bear as a BFF?) never allows her character
to become the whining, nagging shrew she could so easily have been.
The
supporting cast are terrific with Rules of Engagement’s Patrick Warburton good as John’s
closeted colleague Guy who proudly asserts his heterosexuality while spending
his nights getting drunk at gay underground fight clubs. Giovanni Ribisi is wonderfully creepy
as obsessive Ted fan and stalker Donny and an extended cameo by Flash Gordon’s Sam J. Jones, playing
himself as a coke-snorting party animal is hilarious while perhaps the best gag
of the movie involves Ted’s affair with a very unexpected pop princess, her
pivotal cameo role touched by demented genius.
Anarchic,
raunchy and gleefully, hilariously offensive there’s a good-natured underlying
sweetness to Ted that is genuinely refreshing. At it’s profane core, Ted is a classic tale of friendship,
of growing up, of finding your way in the world. It just happens to also revolve around a talking teddy bear
who pays a hooker to crap on his best friend’s floor during a game of Truth or
Dare. Ted is cute, cuddly, crass fun.
David Watson
Directed
by:
Written
by:
Produced
by:
Starring:
Mila
Kunis,
Mark
Wahlberg,
Laura
Vandervoort, Seth
MacFarlane, Giovanni
Ribisi,
Patrick
Warburton, Jessica
Stroup,
Patrick
Stewart,
Ryan
Reynolds, Sam J. Jones
Genre:
Language:
English
Runtime:
1
hour 46 minutes
Certificate:
15
Rating:
4/5
Release
date:
1st
August 2012
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