Ted 2

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Amanda Seyfried, Seth MacFarlane

Directed by: Seth MacFarlane

Review by Brendan Dousi

[rating: 2/5]

Have you ever looked at the latest listings at your local theatre and been baffled as to why a film exists? Not just an original film, either, but a sequel. You find yourself completely overwhelmed by the fact that enough people enjoyed the first one that they decided to make a second one. This year joining the ranks of films like Son of the Mask and Sex and the City 2 is Mark Wahlberg starrer Ted 2. Now, I wasn’t a huge fan of Seth MacFarlane’s original Ted film, but hopefully with a second crack at it he can improve on the formula, right?

Ted (Seth MacFarlane) and Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth) have finally tied the knot and are experiencing a few marital bumps in their first year. They are constantly fighting, worrying about money and are growing to hate each other, so with the advice from a sassy black woman they decide the best thing to do is to have a baby. Unfortunately, due to various genital-related issues, they are unable to conceive on their own and decide to try for adoption. It is here where certain red flags are raised about whether Ted is officially considered a human or not and Ted enlists help from his man-child recently-divorced best friend John (Mark Wahlberg) and fresh pop-culture illiterate stoner lawyer Samantha (Amanda Seyfried). If that isn’t trouble enough, the psychopathic Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) is also back on the scene.

There is a lot of potential in Ted 2; it has a number of promising set-pieces and tropes to play off of, from Court-Room Drama to Road-trip movie and even a little bit of action and thriller thrown in as well. Unfortunately the film is never truly focused enough to make the most out of any of these situations. There are funny moments, that’s to be sure, some of these even drew out a number of uncontrollable laughs. This was usually when the characters said something witty or there was a good piece of observational humour. These moments are drowned out, though, because the film tries to be a melting pot of any and all types of humour from referential to slapstick to gross-out. This ‘throw crap at the wall and see what sticks’ kind of humour definitely has its audience, there was a lot of laughing going on in the screening I attended, but it certainly isn’t for everyone.

Compared to the first Ted, Ted 2 is definitely an improvement. The replacement of Mila Kunis’ “I’m a woman that doesn’t want you to have fun” character with Amanda Seyfried’s cool stoner lawyer character certainly livens things up and releases this film of a sense of innate misogyny that plagued the first. Still, like the first, it’s like the film really wants to offend people. It is fixated on that ‘bro’ humour mentality that is insistent on being racist, queerphobic and misogynistic. It honestly felt like the film couldn’t bear (bear, hah) to go over five minutes without a ‘no-homo’ gay joke. It even bothered to insert ‘masculine’ gay characters that pop up every once in a while where the joke seemed to just be “isn’t it funny that these ‘straight’ guys are gay?’. It just made the film reek of a level of juvenility that even a scene featuring Mark Wahlberg covered in rejected sperm samples couldn’t muster.

Ted 2 is a bit of a hodgepodge of set-ups, humour and direction but it nevertheless still has quite a bit of entertainment value to offer. While it certainly isn’t for everyone, Ted 2 still delivers a decent number of unapologetic laughs and is sure to please fans of the first film.