As a dedicated Seth MacFarlane fan, I really expected to like Ted. The concept of the film seemed hilarious and original and I trusted MacFarlane to not let the film become an uninspired romcom, full of empty characters and lazy jokes. In short, I expected Ted to restore my faith in comedies. Even while watching the opening scene, a witty satire of children’s fantasy films, I kept thinking I was about to watch the best comedy since Some Like It Hot. But perhaps my expectations were too high.
MacFarlane’s directorial debut stars Mark Wahlberg as John Bennett, a 35-year-old man struggling to balance his job, his relationship with Lori (Mila Kunis) and his bizarre bromance with a living, breathing teddy bear, tentatively named Ted. The whole world seems to want to seperate John and Ted, with Lori pressuring John to distance himself from his lifelong friend and a pair of psychotic stalkers pursuing Ted throughout the film. John and Ted’s triumph over these various obstacles to their friendship almost make Ted a touching film, but any sentiment in the plot is completely overshadowed by the mediocrity of its jokes and the blandness of its characters.
As funny as MacFarlane’s television shows are, his humour does not translate well onto the big screen. Repetition and long, drawn out fight sequences may work well in cartoons, but a lot of MacFarlane’s trademark comedy falls flat in Ted. The film tries to cram as many Family Guy-style pop culture references as possible into 106 minutes regardless of how irrelevant or outdated they are just for the sake of being slightly controversial by offending a few random celebrities. It also resorts far too often to cheap toilet humour when the film has been serious for too long, using fart jokes as a lazy trick to back out of sentimental moments.
Nevertheless, everything Ted says is automatically hilarious thanks to MacFarlane’s ingenious voice acting. Most of the film’s small amount of hilarity comes from the sight of a child’s toy speaking with a strong Bostonian accent, the surprise and amusement of which never wears off. The film’s only high points are when Ted is left to his own devices, particularly in scenes with his brilliantly tacky white trash girlfriend. However, MacFarlane fails to make the most of the film’s only real asset, dedicating far too much time to the tedious central love story between the one-dimensional John and Lori at the expense of the hysterical titular character. The dull couple have the same conversation scene after scene even though it is clear from the outset what the outcome of their relationship will be. It is difficult to root for the two or feel at all sympathetic towards either of them when all Lori does is complain for no real reason and all John does is appease her unreasonable demands, completely abandoning his best friend in the process.
Ted is probably the sole funny character in the film because the only person who understands how MacFarlane’s jokes are supposed to be told is MacFarlane himself. Wahlberg in particular fails to identify jokes and deliver them as such, making it difficult to know when you’re supposed to be laughing. He is also unsuccessful in upholding the illusion of the bear’s tangibility, failing to interact with an imaginary Ted and making it painfully obvious that there was no actual bear present during filming. Wahlberg’s inability to do what even a ten-year-old Henry Thomas managed to do in E.T. means that there is absolutely no chemistry between ‘best friends’ John and Ted.
All in all, Ted relies too heavily on the humour which made Family Guy a small screen success. With only one vaguely interesting character and very few good jokes, the film has very little going for it. It could have been saved by dedicating more screen time to Ted himself but the heavy focus on the predictable core romance mean that Ted proves that Seth MacFarlane should definitely just stick to television.