The foul mouth bear and his friend John are back for hopefully another laugh inducing film. This time Ted goes out to prove to the state of Massachusetts that he is in fact a person. Think that sounds silly? You’re watching a movie with a talking bear who drinks and smokes weed. You’re either in or you’re not.
Now it should be mentioned I never saw A Million Ways to Die in the West (Seth MacFarlane second directorial effort), so I was coming into this movie with hopes to live up to the first one. To my mind I don’t think it did. But as I said before, if you buy into the premise, which I did, then you’re in for a good time.
Seth MacFarlane brings his comedic genius once again playing a Teddy Bear name Ted who came to life in the first movie. There are gags which will make you smile and ones which erupt out of nowhere because you never saw it coming. I won’t spoil anything, but just wait until Ted and John go to the comedy store.
John (played by Mark Wahlberg) doesn’t have as much to do in this film. He mainly spends it trying to get over the Mila Kunis’ character, Laurie, from the first movie. After a divorce John is struggling to get back into the dating game. In comes Ted’s lawyer Samantha (played by Amanda Seyfried) who becomes John’s new love interest. Seyfried does well and pulls of the naivety that the Samantha character has with pop culture references is quite hilarious.
Some of the negatives that I have are minor but did affect my overall experience. The main one is that this movie is too long for a comedy. Running at 119 minutes wasn’t helped by the return of Giovanni Ribsi’s character Donny from the first film. In this movie he acted a sub-plot which almost wasn’t needed. Even if they kept it in, there was no need for his involvement. One of my thoughts in regards to the first film was that for two thirds of the film it was extremely funny then lost momentum towards the end. Ted 2 however was injected with humour throughout but had times when I wanted the jokes to come back.
I had a good time with Ted 2. It isn’t the standout that the first one was but it didn’t need to be. Halfway through the film I thought to myself how great it is to sit in a theatre and watch a Teddy Bear in a live action film recreating scenes from The Breakfast Club. If you were planning on seeing this movie I would recommend to see it because you’ll get your money’s worth.
Review by Daniel Clements
Twitter: @clemo_24 or @NovastreamAU