By James Hancock June 26th, 2015
I’m not sure if comedies should ever be reviewed with anything more than a tweet. Comedy is probably the most subjective genre out there and what is absolutely hysterical to one person could just as easily be unwatchable to another. On the other hand, I once counted myself a pretty avid fan of Seth MacFarlane’s style of comedy so I figure I owe the man at least a small explanation after admitting that I can’t stand his latest movie. I was already worried after seeing last summer’s ‘A Million Ways to Die in the West’, a movie that I felt had about five minutes of comedy versus a lot of really tedious material to fight through in order to get to those particular scenes. ‘Ted 2’ has a similar problem where the movie has a few minutes of side-splitting comedy amidst a lot of other scenes where MacFarlane has clearly forgotten he is supposed to be making a funny movie. The movie swings back and forth between being an ill-conceived musical and a sanctimonious, simple-minded melodrama about civil rights. Don’t get me wrong. Politically I agree with each and every issue that Seth MacFarlane shoe horns into this story, but I have zero interest in seeing any of these topics broached in a movie where shit, piss, ejaculation, farts and local Boston humor are ostensibly the main attractions. There’s a nauseating smugness to the way MacFarlane feels obliged to talk down to his audience about subjects that should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of education. I go to his movies to laugh, not to hear a sermon. If MacFarlane wants to stretch his creative muscles and tackle new material, I commend him for it. He’s probably bored to distraction with writing and performing the type of comedy that made me a fan of his in the first place. But if he wants to make musicals with a social conscience, then he should create a new franchise, not burden a movie about a talking teddy bear with subject matter that is wildly out of place given the setting. Like I said earlier, the movie has a few amazing scenes. Liam Neeson’s cameo is particularly good. And there is the added attraction of Amanda Seyfried who is so hot that I could feel the skin melting off my skull every time I saw her on screen. But for the most part, I spent the entire film grinding my teeth in anger and scowling at the screen at the sentimental nonsense I was being exposed to. I would have given my eye teeth just to have one scene on par with the Flash Gordon sequence from the first ‘Ted’. Everything you need to know about the movie can be seen in the trailer below. If it jumps out at you, by all means, give the movie a go. For my part, I’m planning on obliterating my brain in about 2 minutes with the very same products the characters in this film are so fond of and forgetting that this movie ever happened to me.
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