I went to see Ted. I knew it was about a guy and a bear. I knew Mark W was in it. I had seen the trailer at some point and thought I would hate it. It looked stupid. That is about all I knew.
Nevertheless, it was recommended to me by someone I respect, so I went in with an open mind. That open mind was slammed shut in the first 15 minutes with the horrible opening they chose to use. I hoped it would get better. It never did. It was, stupid.
You know when you truly hate the first 10 minutes and it is grossly awful that it is going to be that bad. And it was. It certainly lived down to that low standard.
I saw this movie with my wife. We had just seen To Rome With Love a couple of weeks earlier. As we walked towards the actual theater, To Rome With Love was in the next one over. I said the words I knew I would eat. "At least it can't be worse than To Rome With Love."
So much for that. To Rome With Love was a masterpiece compared to this.
I have never watched Family Guy. I have seen a few scenes here and there, but it never grabbed me enough to make me watch an entire episode or season. It is unique humor, but I don't really remember seeing anything that moved me one way or the other. When I have seen it, I did like the sarcasm aspect and thought that was always on the mark. In many ways, Ted did have that as well. I will give Seth McFarlane that. He has a unique sense of humor.
After seeing Ted, I looked up a few scenes of Family Guy. Now... I get it. It is just as moronic and offensive as Ted is. A grade six punk kid could write that crap. Seth McFarlane is a writing genius? My ass he is. He is a no talent hack who uses juvenile humor and bathroom jokes. When you know all that, Ted is what it is. It is...a piece of crap. A horrible piece of crap. At times, it can be funny, but those times are very few and far between.
Everyone says that Family Guy is funny. I have never seen it. but I have seen Ted. I can say this: it is not funny. Not even remotely funny. It has 3 or 4 really great jokes, and about 100 that aren't. Most are poorly timed, acted, spoken, they are obscene, borderline racist, some not borderline.
"Wow"...those were the words that first came out of my mouth as I left the theater. I am rarely speechless. This is one of those rare times. Of course, as my wife asked my thoughts, I wasn't speechless for long. She expected that I liked it or would like it. Of course, I did not. I still don't understand why a lot of people think I would like this movie. Yes, I am sarcastic and snarky. McFarlane is that. But, I like a bit of intelligence to go along with that. McFarlane is anything but intelligent in the way he uses his humor. He is over the top lazy and always reverts back to the bathroom humor aspect. He just smacks of a lazy writer who can't be bothered working hard enough to take the sarcasm and bring it home with some intelligent dialogue. He is the king of the one liner and that is all he hopes to offer. In a full length feature film, that simply won't work. Maybe in Family Guy, it does. He is clearly out of his element here. He also directed this movie, that is obvious. Or, should I say he mis-directed this movie.
Woody Allen used to be that writer who worked hard at making each line and each scene intelligent to go along with the silly. He doesn't do that either. At least he did at one point. It appears McFarlane never has..and never will.
Sitting through this entire movie, I now know what true pain really feels like. It was like being at work and that last two hours. You keep looking at the clock and thinking..Does two hours really take that long? And it does. And it seems like 10 hours. That last 10 minutes seems like it is taking forever.
Ted could have been a really good movie. The premise was very good. It could have been very funny. Even if the jokes were written better, it could have been a lot funnier. Again, the lazy writing smacks of someone who is happy to just go for the fart joke one liner and not bother to write the whole scene with a bit of care. If you like that sort of thing, this is your movie. I don't.
It was almost like there were two comedy writers. One was funny, the other one wasn't. And they took turns writing scenes, or even parts of scenes. It kept giving you hope that it would turn for the better. Every time you hoped for that, it went down the toilet like most of the humor in the movie.
At times it was like a stand up was just trying to insert punch lines but they had not been set up in any way. Those jokes could have been funny, they were somewhat funny, if the setup had been presented. Mostly, it wasn't.
It has been pointed out to me by a few people that sometimes movies are just silly and you have to just accept them for that. I don't mind silly at all. I used to love Monty Python (still do), and I absolutely love Austin Powers. But, there is some setup, some care and some clever writing backing all of that up. Silly, just for silly sake does not appeal to me. That is not to say that others need that, or want that. What I am saying is that if you do, Ted is not the movie for you.
I now have a true mission in life. I have purpose. My life's goal is to steal all the remaining pens in the world so Seth McFarlane can never ever write again. He cannot be allowed to ever write something like this again. Of course, since this movie is doing huge box office you can be sure he is writing, Ted 2, and that studio executives are waiting with baited breath for it.
Mark Wahlberg. I have liked him in a few things, specifically The Fighter. But, you can truly see how bad an actor he is when the script is bad. He was that bad, because this script was that bad.
Mila Kunis. She was a waste. She is a talented actress and she had little or nothing to do in this film. Ditto on Patrick Warburton, who was totally wasted on a bit part character that was poorly written and highly unbelievable.
Most can consider me rude. That may be valid, it may not. But even for me, this movie was beyond rude. It was moronic most of the way. I advise you to avoid it at all costs.
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