Originally published June 28, 2015 on FrontRowCentral.com
Ted 2 features a scene in which our titular talking teddy bear smokes weed out of a dildo bong.
If you giggled at that sentence, skip the entire rest of this review and go see the movie, because nothing else I say here could possibly dissuade you from it.
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Now that those people are gone, let’s get down to brass tacks: For a comedy already operating on the premise that a teddy bear comes to life and becomes a middle-aged ass-basket, Ted 2’s greatest sin is that it is unfathomably boring. This sequel drives the original film’s already-thin premise further into the ground in a desperate attempt to strike just a little bit more gold, where long stretches of the movie go by without anything even resembling a joke. If the first Ted is like a decent third-season episode of Family Guy (and that’s being generous), Ted 2 comes off more like a twelfth-season episode almost entirely made up of incoherent screaming, racial slurs and Mark Wahlberg showing dick pics to a CGI teddy bear. It’s pretty clear the well has run dry at this point, and Seth MacFarlane is just coming up with this crap in his sleep.
The film opens with teddy-bear-come-to-life Ted (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) marrying his grocery store sweetheart Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). A year later the two decide to have a baby to salvage their now bitter, loveless marriage. Enter the federal government, who suddenly realizes that Ted isn’t legally a person, refuses his application to adopt a child and revokes his marriage license. With his best friend Johnny (Mark Wahlberg) and lawyer Sam (Amanda Seyfried) in his corner, Ted goes to court to fight for his right to be recognized as a human being. (As many others have observed, Seth MacFarlane won some kind of cosmic release date lottery for this film to hit theaters the same day the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.)
Credit where it’s due: The courtroom scenes do a nice job of giving the film a little bit of thematic weight, even if it only barely earns it. Ted’s argument for personhood comes down to the very simple fact that he loves his wife and his best friend, which in the eyes of any sane individual ought to be enough. The state’s defense attorney (John Slattery) counters by pointing out that Ted is a toy, and that his talkbox will cry out “I love you!” to anyone who pushes on his chest. Sam then gives a heartfelt speech referencing Dred Scott and the civil rights movement, but this is about where the sincerity comes to a halt. What could have, and perhaps should have, been the cornerstone of the movie is wrapped up in a matter of minutes, almost as an afterthought.
The bulk of the film — whose 115 minutes running time is tantamount to torture — finds Ted, Johnny and Sam on a road trip from Boston to New York City to meet with a leading civil rights attorney played by Morgan Freeman. Along the way, the trio get into all sorts of consequence-free shenanigans like making fun of blind people and stealing a whole bunch of weed from a marijuana farm after crashing their car through the roof of a barn. The film is wall-to-wall with scenes like this, and for each one that works (like Liam Neeson sheepishly asking if it’s okay for adults to buy Trix cereal), there are ten that simply don’t. And so many of these scenes wind up going nowhere that it turns what ought to be a pretty straightforward plot into an incoherent mess.
The final nail in the Ted 2 coffin is the return of Donny (Giovanni Ribisi) as the film’s antagonist. I thought the government was already a pretty good antagonist for a teddy bear with no rights, but hey, let’s bring back that psycho who just really wants to rip Ted’s guts out. After all, it worked so well the first time, right? The finale, which takes place at the New York Comic-Con, is a cacophony of pop culture references and MacFarlane’s signature “Hey, remember this thing?” moments. MacFarlane apparently felt like blowing a bunch of money on licensing fees, because he hired dozens of people to dress like stormtroopers, ninja turtles and daleks for a huge brawl that makes Peter Griffin’s fights with a giant chicken seem mannered and well-executed. Patrick Warburton even shows up wearing his Tick costume, but it’s just an excuse for him to push nerds to the ground and then call them nerds. Get it? Because they’re nerds and they’re at the nerd fair. Great joke, guys.
I’ve made the complaint before about comedies becoming too long these days, and I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but it’s the truth. If your comedy film is going to be two hours long, you had better have a good reason for it. Filmmakers like Judd Apatow and Paul Feig tend to get away with it better than most because they use that extra time establishing characters and building situations. Ted 2 spends its first half hour showing us Ted’s attempts at fatherhood, but once his court case is over and done with, any semblance of character-building or plot go right out the window. Ted 2 is a joke delivery system first and a thoughtful statement on civil rights in a distant second. It sounds ridiculous to say this about a Seth MacFarlane film, but I’m honestly kind of disappointed. This could have been a unique spin on a timely issue, but instead it’s just two hours of assholes being assholes.
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