Cinemazlowski 'Ted 2' an improvement on the original, but still stoops low for jokes

Jun 26, 2015

The movie "Ted" took the movie business by surprise back in 2012, when the silly comedy about a grown man named Johnny played by Mark Wahlberg, who still lives with the teddy bear, Ted, he had as a child. The reason why he kept the childhood memento is because Ted magically came to life one Christmas and became Johnny's best friend (aka "Thunder Buddy") for life.

That movie, co-written and directed by Seth MacFarlane of "Family Guy" fame in his live-action filmmaking debut (and co-starring MacFarlane as the voice of Ted), made $218 million in the US alone and a total of $550 million worldwide. That success was almost inexplicable, as the movie largely consisted of Johnny and Ted getting into one debauched situation after another, involving drugs, sex, hookers, car chases and more, all shown through the prism of a completely stupid movie that had some laughs in it but very little plot to string them together.

But with so much money made by the original, it was inevitable there would be a sequel. The TV commercials and trailers for "Ted 2" seemed to go in a completely strange and wrong direction: the story is about Ted having to prove his personhood in order to have the right to stay married to his human wife and to adopt children. If he can't prove he's the same as a human mentally and emotionally, he will be regarded merely as property and will even lose his job as a grocery store cashier.

Thus, the ads for "Ted 2" have featured Ted in a buttoned-up suit, sitting in a courtroom rather than having anarchic fun with Johnny all across Boston. The ads gave the movie a self-serious tone, and seemed to also be a ham-fisted allegory for the battle over gay marriage rights.

But thankfully nothing could be further from the truth. The new movie is packed with gags and one-liners from nearly the beginning to end, with many of the best lines taking amazing swipes at the likes of Kanye West and the Kardashians, and Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler. In keeping with the style of "Family Guy," MacFarlane has written a movie that throws outrageous zingers at the audience on an often non-stop basis, and takes shots at numerous celebrities and politically correct social tropes.

MacFarlane and his co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild  weave together a constant stream of marijuana-smoking jokes and scenarios with hilarious homages to movies like "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" and "Field of Dreams" and the aforementioned shock humor beating up a string of celebrities with insults.

Thus, we have the crux of the problem for Catholic and other Christian moviegoers. On the one hand, "Ted 2" maintains the tradition of MacFarlane's "Family Guy" in using as much crude yet clever humor as possible, and since he has more freedom in an R-rated movie than in FCC-regulated television,this means the movie contains many, many swear words, including at least 100 uses of F or S words and about 20 uses of God's name in the form of JC and GD.

In the context of a simple-minded Boston guy who's goofing around with his talking-teddy-bear friend, I would wager these swears are less offensive than they would be coming in the context of a violent criminal or a couple having a screaming fight in a serious movie. But yes, many of our readers will absolutely be offended. Add in the frequent pot jokes and total advocacy of marijuana smoking, and this is definitely not a movie for most of the CNA audience.

There are also numerous sexual and scatological jokes, though no sex or nudity is shown. The one visual gag that is truly offensive involves Johnny and Ted accidentally causing a huge spill in an in-vitro fertilization clinic, which I will spare readers from reading about directly. Finally, there is an absurd fight set at a comic-book convention, in which numerous costumed comic-book fans duke it out in silly fashion. And Johnny is friends with a gay couple who have a few jokes based on their punching and tripping the nerds at the comic-book convention; these moments are more mean than funny.

However, the strange thing about "Ted 2" is that it also makes a few good points along the way. Ted's battle to regain his marriage places high value upon marriage, and is not the same-sex marriage allegory it appears to be. Johnny and their lawyer fall in love with each other, and never have sex, implied offscreen or on. Their relationship is sweet and chaste and involves a surprisingly beautiful love song that MacFarlane actually wrote himself.

The movie also comically attacks the use of pornography, as Ted confronts Johnny about how much he's watching and how perverse it is, telling him he can't just watch porn but needs to get out and find a new relationship again after his divorce (Johnny is not Catholic, so arguing the merits of divorce and remarriage doesn't enter the picture here). The way Johnny and Ted completely destroy Johnny's laptop is hilarious, and the movie shows his true-love, pure relationship is vastly preferable to porn addiction.

Most impressively, MacFarlane and his co-writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild weave in an intelligent and occasionally moving discussion of what the definition of personhood is. Is a person formed by having a soul, their mind or their heartfelt emotions? The fact that they can wage these big questions (and arrive at a pretty moral and sound conclusion), mixing the raunchy humor with smart jokes about such landmark Supreme Court cases as the Dred Scott decision, Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. The Board of Education is absolutely remarkable (and incredibly prescient timing considering the cultural battles being freshly waged in South Carolina right now). .

The one artistic weak spot in the movie parallels the weakest moments of the first "Ted": an annoying performance by Giovanni Ribisi as a Ted-obsessed weirdo who wants to kidnap the bear and have it all to himself. Ribisi's character is utterly gross and unpleasant and brings few if any fresh laughs to the proceedings; in fact, his subplot drags both movies out 20 minutes longer than they need to be.  

On the other hand, Wahlberg is hilarious fun as the perpetually stoned and utterly stupid Johnny, and Amanda Seyfried brings luminous romantic magic and smarts to her role as the dope-smoking lawyer who takes on Ted's case pro bono. And there are also a stream of big-surprise cameos that are so well-cast and sharply performed that the packed audience at the advance screening exploded with laughter and applause several times over.

With all these artistic factors in its favor, it's a shame that MacFarlane felt a need to stoop so low and often into the gutter. Here's hoping that his work will move to be cleaner the next time, consistently raising its moral quality to match its artistic inventiveness.