Ted

(Seth MacFarlane/2012/USA)

Do you like weed and sexual innuendo? Yeah? Ted should blow some smoke up your alley then. The humour’s adolescent, the idea of friendship getting in the way of romance is nothing new and an anthropomorphic toy is hardly original but there is something strangely endearing about Ted. The sum is more than the parts here. The direct conflict between Lori, who embodies marriage, responsibility and being grown up or “manly” and Ted, a stuffed toy who conflates the life of a single man with childish things like a fear of thunder and living without purpose or direction, getting stoned, talking shite etc, is on the face of it insulting and puerile but it’s subverted by the end of the movie. But hey, no one is taking anything too seriously here and for the most part it avoids being cringe worthy, sometimes makes you laugh out loud and it has Sam fucking Jones in it. If you grew up with Flash Gordon with a Queen theme tune it’s hitting a button right there. 

 Ted shouldn’t work when you put any thought to it but it’s a bit of fun with a nice happy ending. It’s full of clichés, old jokes, silly jokes and plain stupid stuff but it’s totally aware of all that and doesn’t care and nor should you. There’s recognition by the end that a man can have time in his life just for goofing as well as be mature and responsible; that one doesn’t go without the other and that men who allow time for kicking back with the lads are all the better for it. It’s not a particularly revelatory point but it’s the most mature part of a film about a dumbfuck from Brooklyn who nearly screws up the ride of his life because of a fucking teddy bear.

(2.5/5)