Cinema Reviews
Ted 2 Review
The thunder buddies are back – but the focus has skewed slightly to one side this time round. Mark Wahlberg takes sort of a back seat to Ted himself as this time round its Ted who has a few problems to fix in his own life.
Ted gets married, the gets the idea to improve his family life a year in by having a baby – which then leads to him losing his identity as a person and finds himself off to court to prove his civil rights.
Sure we find out that John has gotten divorced, and he has lawyer/stoner Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) to chase, but it’s all very sub-plot compared to Ted’s issues with identity.
Along this half a road trip movie we are treated to a barrage of jokes, situations, stunts and foul language, all the while sewing in a lot of unwanted time on drama that the audience isn’t going to care much about in this bloated (almost 2 hours) comedy.
Seth MacFarlane’s biggest issue as a writer is that he is his own best friend and worst enemy at the same time. Most of the jokes in Ted 2 (Not to mention Family guy) are ones that have little to no regard for the main plot itself. They are short skits, or just gags. And whilst it’s a relief to note that a lot of the “gag” writing works perfectly well in Ted 2, it comes at the cost of story. His story writing and the comedy associated with the plot often fails.
The two main problems with Ted 2 are that is brings back two of the main issues that were major flaws with the first movie. The supporting character of Donny (Yes he’s creepy, but he just isn’t funny and he drags the film in a direction you just don’t care to go) and also the third act relies too heavily on resolving dramatic arcs instead of just sticking with the funny.
As with most sequels there are returning jokes from the first film and many lazy steals from 80’s films (The Breakfast Club and Planes, Trains and Automobiles) and cameos galore – the majority of which are a wonder why they are there in the first place (Liam Neeson) and even Sam Jones who gloriously lived up the first film is more of a detriment this time round.
In the end there has just about been enough big laughs at the cast (Wahlberg and Seyfried in particular not afraid to have the audience laugh at them) so it should keep returning customers happy.
Steven Hurst