Film review: Ted

By ALISTAIR HARKNESS
Published on 26/07/2012 01:50

SETH MacFarlane’s feature debut could easily have been another slice of man-child angst but the fuzzy star provides big laughs

TED (15)

Directed by: SETH MACFARLANE

Starring: MARK WAHLBERG, MILA KUNIS, SETH MACFARLANE, JOEL MCHALE, GIOVANNI RIBISI

Rating: ****

Adolescent men have long been a staple of American comedies, but the last few years has seen a surge in movies revolving around overgrown boys struggling to leave their childhood obsessions behind. It’s probably no coincidence that these films have coincided with the first generation of blockbuster fans edging into their thirties and forties. Watch any Hollywood comedy (or US sitcom for that matter) and the chances are they’ll feature male protagonists who are fundamentally decent, but also way too immature to realise that just because they saw the Star Wars trilogy when it first came out, doesn’t mean they have a licence to act like a kid for the rest of their lives.

Judd Apatow has become the king of these types of movies, but with his debut feature Ted, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane may just have served up the last word on the subject. Taking the man-child concept to its logical, on-the-nose extreme, Ted revolves around an affable 35-year-old underachiever called John (Mark Wahlberg) whose best friend since childhood happens to be a walking, talking toy bear called Ted.

If that makes the film sound like it’s going to be a one-joke movie – and the fact that Ted also happens to be a randy, pot-smoking, foul mouthed teddy bear doesn’t exactly dispel such preconceptions – then the surprising news is that this joke is consistently amusing.

That’s something that can be attributed to MacFarlane’s decision to play the gag straight. John, for instance, isn’t delusional: he hasn’t imagined Ted, nor is he projecting a split personality – like Mel Gibson in The Beaver – onto an inanimate object. Everyone can see and interact with Ted, a fact we find out early on via a tone-setting Christmas prologue that takes us back to the 1980s suburban Boston John’s childhood where we discover that he’s is so desperately unpopular he wishes that the Teddy Ruxpin-style gift his parents have just given him might come to life and love him like a friend.

Christmas being a time of miracles, the bear promptly comes alive, freaking out John’s parents and becoming a celebrity on the talk show circuit until – “like Corey Feldman” – interest in him wanes and he devotes himself once again to being John’s best pal for life.

Flash forward 27 years and the film catches us up with John and Ted who now live together and spend their spare time getting high and obsessively watching the campy 1980 version of Flash Gordon. Though John has a job – albeit an undemanding one – Ted has, essentially, become crutch, pulling double duty as the archetypal annoying slacker best friend who refuses to grow up and a literal representation of John’s own inability to put away childish things and become a man.

This is rammed home to him by his suddenly faltering relationship with Lori (Mila Kunis), his girlfriend of four years whose tolerance of Ted is starting to waver as it becomes clear that John is never going to amount to anything while Ted is still on hand to, say, climb into bed with them during a thunderstorm in order to provide a terrified John with the requisite soothing words to get him over his childhood fear of inclement weather.

The film is at its best during these scenes. As interspecies best buddies, John and Ted have a wonderfully relaxed chemistry and it’s surprising just how funny crass, juvenile observations on life are simply because they’re coming from the mouth of a toy bear. MacFarlane, of course, provides the voice for Ted and does it mostly in the style of Family Guy’s patriarch Peter Griffin, with some hard “r”-dropping Bostonian vocal inflections providing him with a couple of opportunities for self-referential gags about his lack of range. His work nicely complements Wahlberg, who is always at his best when he’s allowed to let his natural sweetness shine through that provincial working-class toughness behind which he has a tendency to hide on screen. When his and Ted’s inevitable bust-up happens – in a marvellously extended fight scene executed with the demented energy of a Tex Avery cartoon – it’s all the funnier because it’s grounded in a believable friendship going sour.

Fans of Family Guy will also be pleased to know that pop culture gags come thick and fast, and while that’s often a sign of laziness, MacFarlane’s choices here are so specific and unusual they actually reinforce the themes. Not everything works, though. Kunis is given frustratingly little to do (although at least her character isn’t demonised for wanting John to grow up) and a kidnap subplot involving a deranged 1980s-obsessed fan of Ted’s (Giovanni Ribisi) feels a little tacked-on. Yet, for the most part, the film does a good job of skewering this peculiarly male desire to remain a child while squeezing the last drop of humour from it.