Ted is everything I anticipated it to be and more. The joyously ridiculous comedy of Seth MacFarlane has brightened my life for around 7 years now, and I can always rely on Family Guy, American Dad! or The Cleveland Show to make me howl with laughter. So when my partner and I saw the trailer for Ted in the cinema, we looked at each other and said, "We've gotta see that!" and it turned out to be the funniest thing I've seen all year.
So, anyone familiar with MacFarlane's work will see many of his trademarks in Ted. He, Mila Kunis, Patrick Warburton, Alex Borstein and Patrick Stewart are all involved, obsessive passion for quintessential '80s icons, and cringe-worthy, crude humour, all topped off with his famous cartoony Massachusettes drawl.
The movie starts on Christmas Eve of 1985, when social outcast John Bennett makes a special wish that his new teddy would come to life and be his friend. When his wish comes true he, his parents and the world are suitably shocked, and Ted starts making the rounds of talk shows. But, as Patrick Stewart's narration concludes, "whether you're Corey Feldman, Frankie Muniz, Justin Bieber or a talking teddy bear, eventually nobody gives a shit."
And so we land in 2012, and find John in a dead-end job, failing to commit to his girlfriend, and smoking more pot than Cheech, Chong, Harold and Kumar put together, and all in the company of his BFF, Ted. John (Mark Wahlberg) has been with Lori (Mila Kunis) for 4 years now, and is facing the inevitable...committing to her and proposing marriage. But, as his friends needlessly point out, Ted is something of a bad influence on John, and getting in the way of his relationship. Is he ever! Together, John and Ted are like a couple of 13 year olds, and on the evening of their anniversary, he and Lori come home to find Ted partying with four hookers, one of whom is "pretty ballsy" when it comes to Truth or Dare!
So, Ted has got to move out, get a job and start actin' responsible. Luckily, Ted lives in a Manhattan where you roll joints in public without getting arrested, and bosses promote you for sexually defiling the produce. His new bachelor lifestyle seems to be paying off, with wild, star-studded parties taking place in his squalid apartment.
Naturally, John temporarily screws up his relationship, he and Ted temporarily fall out, and then trouble strikes in the form of a demented guy and "a kid who may be his son and may be his lover." The structure of the story is cliched in parody form, and all the blanks are filled in with MacFarlane's most hilarious, moronic and outrageous material yet. It's like having hiccups for two hours straight, with each *hic* replaced with a laugh-out-loud. It won't appeal to anyone straight-laced, politically correct or devoutly religious. But from my observations, the majority of people will be rolling in the aisles from start to the very end.
No comments:
Post a Comment