Andrew’s Verdict

I was expecting something a little more dynamic and genuinely humorous in either a more stupid way or perhaps with the comical jokes. Instead the plot is typical and formulaic and my description of the movie could describe a number of movies.

The teddy bear is just a vehicle for Seth Macfarlane to peddle his obnoxious brand of humour. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate a little bit of obnoxious humour and have been rather partial to watching Family Guy, which he created. None of the more intelligent and satirical humour from Seth Macfarlane’s Family Guy transfers to the film.

The movie follows the relationship between a boy (Mark Wahlberg) and his teddy bear Ted (voiced by Seth McFarlane) and the moment where the boy grows up and has a choice to make between his relationship between his teddy bear and the girl of his dreams. We’ve seen this type of thing played out in many films: the bad influence of a friend coming between a couple and the general ultimatum that follows and how everything is reconciled at the end. This time that bad influence comes from Ted. What we get, that makes the comedy, is a bad bear who smokes weed, and tells obnoxious sexual, racial and homophobic jokes. This to me is just Seth McFarlene.

We get our customary cameo, which again is so so, in the form of Flash Gordon. We could go through a list of 80s stars and build something around them that’s not really that interesting. Watching this film is like having one of those friends (in this case Seth McFarlane) who finds something amusing and because you’ve been unfortunate to laugh at the joke you are then subjected to every possible reference to the same joke in a slightly different context. And to make it worse the contexts get even more extreme in your
friends belief that, that is what makes the joke funnier. Its enduring and painful and by association you are somehow complicit in the joke and I refer here to the Brandon Roth joke that becomes extremely tasteless at the end of the film.

There a some moments of laugh-out-loud cringe worthy humour but as an overall film, TED is unremarkable. Finally, Patrick Stewart why are you doing a voice over for this film?