{"id":1943,"date":"2012-07-17T22:38:26","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T02:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=1943"},"modified":"2012-07-17T22:38:26","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T02:38:26","slug":"ted-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/17\/ted-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"For a purported comic genius his knuckle dragging fans claim he is, Seth McFarlane really does lob something of a soft ball in his cinematic debut. I can just imagine Seth one day playing with a teddy bear and giving it foul language in his Peter Griffin voice while laughing hysterically and snorting another line off his Asian hooker’s backside, thus leading to writing the script for “Ted.” McFarlane’s cinematic debut is nothing short of abysmal and infantile with the basis of the film centered on a talking live teddy bear with a foul mouth and serious sex addiction. His owner and friend is a man child whose own immaturity borders on mental retardation at times. But hey, “Family Guy” fans might just find this to be genius. Because talking inanimate objects is comedy gold apparently.<\/p>\n

Anyone whose ever seen a McFarlane series knows that McFarlane just loves talking animals who have opinions and cynical personalities for no apparent reasons. Talking fish with German accents, a bear in a suit working in an office, a talking dog with an alcohol dependency, nothing is off limits. “Ted” (or “How many eighties jokes can Seth McFarlane squeeze in to ninety minutes?”) is really just a remake of “Drop Dead Fred” with a dash of 2011’s “Muppet Movie” when all is said and done. Rather than a psychotic imaginary friend, there’s an obscene bear, and rather than a woman who can’t fit in to adulthood, there’s your typical modern man child who refuses to grow up. Not to mention an array of people who inexplicably put up with their antics and find it hilarious! One night young John wishes for his best friend Ted to come to life and be his friend forever. Thanks to some miracle, Ted comes to life and begins to build his own life as a real individual after a brief encounter with fame, growing up with John and garnering a consciousness of his very own.<\/p>\n

Now John is all grown up and he and Ted apparently share an apartment. Or something. Soon John’s girlfriend Lori begins to tire of their tight bond and wonders if John will find the time to grow up amidst his best friend who gets off on dragging him down. It’s pretty much just Judd Apatow with an animated stuffed doll. As expected, McFarlane pretty much regurgitates much of the same humor from his animated series while doling out nods to his fan base with appearances from the cast of “Family Guy.” Mainly, “Ted” is a film for the fans of McFarlane’s inexplicably popular animated show with humor and tone set to their wave lengths and no one else’s. Meanwhile, much of the film relies on Ted spouting off at the mouth with obscene humor that’s about as filthy as possible and relying on the audience to point out with hilarity that it’s a teddy bear spouting this drivel.<\/p>\n

I guess comedy fans are just that easily pleased. Along the way, to add to the forced melodrama with a script that actually tries to gauge our sympathies for this pair of morons (even with a dramatic fist fight, for some odd reason), there’s a goofy and sloppy sub-plot thrown in involving Giovanni Ribisi who will stop at nothing to buy Ted from John, even if it means kidnapping him. That quickly peters out by the finale in the hail of Flash Gordon jokes ad nauseum, and cameos thrown in to the film like it’s a sitcom. Hey look, Norah Jones had a fling with Teddy! That’s so uncharacteristic of her, I guess it’s funny! In the end, “Ted” really opts for easy humor and even threatens a sequel. It’s two hours of sheer blissful nonsense that would be better spent waving keys in front of the audiences face. I just don’t know how you can’t love a movie that takes a dig at “Superman Returns.” I mean, that’s just pure comic genius right there. I mean no one has ever taken a swipe at “Superman Returns” in the history of film, so Seth McFarlane doing so is original and brilliant. As for “Ted” I can think of a dozen more ways to spend your time, and none of it is at the cost of your IQ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a purported comic genius his knuckle dragging fans claim he is, Seth McFarlane really does lob something of a soft ball in his cinematic debut. I can just imagine Seth one day playing with a teddy bear and giving it foul language in his Peter Griffin voice while laughing hysterically and snorting another line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,349,874,1020],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-fantasy","tag-romance","tag-t"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}