Ted 2. Rated MA15+ (strong drug use, crude humour, sexual references and coarse language). 116 minutes. Directed by Seth MacFarlane. Screenplay by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild.
No doubt as a result of the sensational box office success enjoyed by the original Ted (2012), MacFarlane’s perverted, talking teddy bear with a toxic drug habit is back for a good deal more of exactly the same, mostly crass and tasteless, shenanigans.
Ted 2 begins with Ted (voiced by MacFarlane) marrying his sweetheart Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). When the couple decide to start a family, his best mate John (Mark Wahlberg) offers to be the sperm donor. Unfortunately, Tami-Lyn is unable to conceive, so the couple decide to adopt a child instead. But when Ted discovers he is unable to adopt because he is legally classified as ‘property’ not human, lawyer Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) takes on the fight to have Ted’s civil rights recognised by the courts.
Just like the first film, the CGI Ted is a marvellous creation, and the extent to which you might manage to forget that he is a computer generated character says a lot about how successful Ted (and MacFarlane’s brilliant voicing of him) actually is.
But as it is with every project MacFarlane (Family Guy, A Million Ways to Die in the West) is involved with, your perception of the quality of the entertainment will depend on how you feel about his particular style of humour. At its best, Ted 2 boasts some momentary flashes of MacFarlane’s typically razor-sharp wit, mixed up with some potent and timely observations about the essence of equality.
Unfortunately, it also takes a deadly serious amount of time (just shy of two hours) to lazily and sluggishly insult, ridicule and humiliate everyone and everything in its path.
This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.
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