Ted

"LOOK WHAT JESUS DID. LOOK WHAT JESUS DID. LOOK WHAT JESUS DID" Can't let the homeboys know I fw Ted. I haven’t seen this film in like 2-3 years, and I remember adoring it back then. I like to think I've matured since then and so I expected to hate Ted on this rewatch, but dammit it’s still as funny as when I first watched it. Seth MacFarlane is a man I respect more than I actually like—mainly for his hit or miss humor—and I think Ted is his best contribution to the world. Shit like Family Guy stopped being good the second it hit season 4, so it’s always been odd to me that he wasn’t able to salvage that show but created a really tightly written script for a movie about a talking teddy bear. Anyways, side tangents aside, Ted works more when you aren’t looking for a coherent plot and are more so trying to get a good laugh, because it unceremoniously fails at the former and triumphantly succeeds at the latter The opening doesn’t work well for me, they set up John being a loser with no friends and paint Ted as his only friend and savior, which makes sense in theory, but this plot point is never brought up again and he actually has a lot of friends in his adult life; just always felt weird to me to include that scene of the kids excluding him from their play when it adds nothing at all. It does give us the goat Patrick Stewart’s smooth-as-butter voice over, though, so all lazy plot threads are naturally forgiven. And for the next 45-50 minutes following this, we get some of the funniest movie one-liners of all time, all delivered in MacFarlene's classic 'character says stuff that doesn’t relate to plot' trope, and it works really well here. It’s a really solid first act that sells the narrative well and concisely, and they kind of keep the momentum going until the middle of act 2 I think Ted realizes halfway through that it’s wasted the audiences time with pointless jokes, albeit great jokes but still pointless in presentation, and so they jam in the stuff with Donny that they kind of set up in that one park scene near the beginning. I can’t criticize them that much for stuffing the plot into there, because Donny is shown in the aforementioned park scene, but it feels like they wait a bit too long to incorporate it. The third act is just decent, the bittersweet moments are always interrupted by jokes that ruin the pacing and are just annoying more than anything. I know I’m criticizing the film a lot, but I’m really just bothered by the pacing and presentation than the narrative in and of itself. The plot points are all wonderful, the bittersweet romance between John and what’s-her-name, Ted’s reliance on John that’s better explored in Ted 2 surprisingly enough, and the weirdly genius Donny arc. I complained about how he’s shown to the audience before, but Donny is one of my favorite parts of the film. He has a lot of really great line reads, and the dancing sequence is probably my favorite thing to come out of Ted. The script is rock solid and really hammers home the main point of the film (which is a cliche moral about friendship blah blah blah yuck I’m here for sex jokes not the bible) I’m admittedly not a huge fan of Mark Wahlberg's filmography, but I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t extremely funny here. Everything he says is just charming in a really childish way and I love it, him getting upset at what’s-her-name saying c_nt is utterly hilarious. MacFarlane as Ted is a bit jarring, I must admit, his smooth voice doesn’t seem like it should come out of a teddy bear, but it settles in nicely as the film goes on. I think I’m talking a bit too much about the funny weed movie, so I’ll just summarize all my points really quickly: weird pacing, solid script, great acting, amazing animation on the titular Ted, funny as all hell, a little schmaltzy, and stupid in the best way possible. If I’m looking at Ted from a critical perspective, which I am, it’s not a great film (hence the admittedly not great rating I’ve given it), but it’s subjectively one of my favorite comedy films of all time, it’s really dumb in all the right ways and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Also, Flash Gordon rocks