After
A Million Ways to Die in the West
failed to catch fire at the box office or among critics, Seth
MacFarlane returns to familiar territory by delivering a sequel to his
massively popular foray into films, Ted, which scored over a
half-billion dollars in ticket sales in its 2012 release. It's
hard to follow-up a joke-a-minute movie with a sequel, primarily
because just about all of the best and freshest gags were put into the
first film, while a sequel has try to mine from the same cave of ideas and hope
it can find more secret gems that were somehow left behind.
Ted 2 is set about a half-year out from the end of Ted,
with divorced John Bennett (Wahlberg,
The Gambler) not quite ready to jump back into a
relationship, while his best friend Ted, his teddy bear come to life,
seems to be headed for a break-up of his own with Tami-Lynn (Barth),
his wife and co-worker. Thinking it will be the spark to give his
marriage its second wind, Ted decides what they really need is to have
a kid, but they find that neither party is capable of making this
happen. Going the adoption route against better judgment, Ted is
deemed to not have the rights of a human being, despite his sentience,
as he is just someone's property, which not only means he can't adopt,
but he also can't be married or even have a job, so he loses those
too. To get his life back, Ted must take the issue to court on the
hope that he can be everything he wants to be, securing the services
of spunky-but-unproven lawyer Sam L. Jackson (Seyfried,
While We're Young), but evil
Donny (Ribisi, Selma)
returns to try to get a hold of Ted to dissect him in order to
discover how he can make a line of living teddy bears for everyone to
have, which will be easier to get away with while Ted is deemed
property instead of a person.
As you can tell from the above plot synopsis, this is a plot that's
probably too complicated for what is basiically just a dumb, raunchy comedy
meant to make you laugh. This
becomes increasingly burdensome the more MacFarlane deals with it,
which means that most of the movie's laughs come in the first third of
the film, where things are as light and free as can be (as evidenced
by a fun musical dance number during the opening credits), and begins
to peter out once we get to the civil rights case. Had Ted 2's
final half been
just about Ted's fight for his rights, perhaps it might have been able
to coast on good will for those who laughed enough at the outset, but
MacFarlane goes a step too far by re-introducing another subplot
development in crackpot nemesis Donny for
more of the "capture the bear" antics that are not only not funny, but
we've already seen him do this before in 2012's Ted, where it was also not
very amusing. At a bloated 115 minutes, it's easily 20 minutes
too long, chock full of superfluous and recurring gags that would have
been better relegated to an end-credit reel, or a deleted scene
segment of the Blu-ray release.
Wahlberg's role switches here from star to sidekick, letting
MacFarlane's titular animated bear steer most of the film's story
beats throughout. Mila Kunis sits it out this time, reportedly
due to being pregnant, ironically given the film's theme, while Amanda
Seyfried joins the cast in order to join in on lots and lots of pot
smoking gags that aren't likely to seem very funny for those not
equally stoned at the moment
of viewing. There are no less than three jokes about her
resembling Gollum from Lord of the Rings,
which is another of MacFarlane's worst tendencies: repeating jokes on
the hope that it will somehow get funnier through constant call-backs.
That and celebrity cameos that don't factor into the story, such as a
scene in which a gruff Liam Neeson (Run
All Night) shows up to try to purchase a box of Trix under
the assurance that he won't be arrested for it due to its slogan ,"Trix
is for kids." Only the fact that it's Neeson in Bryan Mills
tough-guy mode makes it vaguely amusing.
If you didn't care for Ted, stay away, as whatever ruffled
your feathers in 2012 will probably do the same here, only more so. There are a
handful of moments that may make you chuckle, but so many more jokes
are misfires, and with the bulk of the humor coming from body fluid,
pot, racial and gay-panic humor, it quickly can turn into a
demoralizing experience for viewers who've grown weary at movies that
deliver on tasteless sight gags as a crutch to comedy when cleverness
and wit are absent. That and incessant pop-culture references
seemingly just to get you to laugh from the remembrance of iconic
things you may have enjoyed in your childhood, like
The Breakfast Club,
Revenge of the Nerds, Planes Trains and
Automobiles, Jurassic Park,
Star Wars, and
Beetlejuice, woven into the jokes
without actually tying them in to the story at hand.
Ted 2
should forever crown MacFarlane as the king of the
throwbacks, throwing back to the 1980s for non-sequitur humor, also
throwing back to Easter eggs for fans of "Family Guy", then throwing
back to his previous movie, and even throwing back to gags we've seen
just two minutes before. In fishing terms, it's like a catch too puny to bother with,
leaving you tempted to throw this one back too.
-- There is yet another throwback joke at the conclusion of the end
credits.
Qwipster's rating
