Ted 2
Director: Seth MacFarlane
(In theaters)
C-
At this point, you know what you’re getting with a Seth MacFarlane movie. The Family Guy creator and one-time (and, in all likelihood, one time only) Oscar host has grown comfortable making others uncomfortable, with a brand of comedy predicated on the often absurd and near-predatory ridicule of anyone and everyone, no matter your race, gender, sexual preference, political views, or social status. Combine that with a litany of dick jokes, and you have MacFarlane’s first two big-screen works: 2012’s vulgar smash-hit Ted and last year’s resoundingly bad A Million Ways to Die in the West. How could he possibly follow these two largely brainless spectacles? With more of the same, it turns out. Like its predecessors, Ted 2 is mostly incapable of surprise.
This time around, the lovable/hatable walking, talking teddy bear and namesake of the franchise (voiced by MacFarlane) marries the out-of-his-league Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth), the apple of his plastic teddy bear eye in the first Ted. A month after their wedding, Ted and Tami-Lynn are suddenly that trashy couple who insult each other in thick Boston accents and yell at neighbors with heads outside their window. Naturally, in order to save their marriage, Ted and Tami-Lynn decide to have a baby. But Ted’s personhood is suddenly called into question (gee golly), and so too is his marriage, his cashiering career, and his status as a self-governing person rather than a piece of property (or, as MacFarlane so eloquently puts it, “a piece of gahbage or shit or sumthin’.”) With his endearingly dim buddy John (Mark Wahlberg) in tow, Ted employs the services of Samantha (Amanda Seyfried) — a pot-smoking, pop-culture-challenged, first-time attorney — to take his “civil rights case” to court.
MacFarlane has never shied from hot-button issues (nor should he, or any comedian for that matter), but his likening a teddy bear’s struggles to that of a slave — especially with the degree of the ongoing racial unrest in America — feels ill-timed and poorly executed. Moreover, Ted 2’s sure-to-be-talked-about scene in which an improv troupe asks for topic suggestions from the audience, only to have Ted and John blurt out “9/11!” “Ferguson, Missouri!” and “the offices of Charlie Hebdo!” is a canned and self-reverential attempt to shock and offend. But this is Seth MacFarlane we’re talking about here, and when you come to expect an excessive degree of provocation, not to mention a tendency to run jokes into the ground through a liberal use of callbacks, nothing is really shocking anymore.
That said, when MacFarlane’s jokes land — usually in the form of a clever pop culture reference — they are frequently hysterical. Liam Neeson’s cameo as a reluctant buyer of Trix cereal is one of the most welcome bits (cameos by Jay Leno and Tom Brady, not so much). Meanwhile, a well-placed Jurassic Park reference, John’s fear of Beetlejuice, and a doctor’s fondness for trickery are all utilized to masterful effect, making the barrage of dick-shaped bongs and black penis gags seem empty by comparison. The final act is set at Comic-Con — a goldmine for a pop culture fanatic like MacFarlane — yet it produces only the occasional snicker, resulting in a bloated and frantic sequence that falls flat more often than it delivers.
And therein lies what makes MacFarlane’s throw-every-ounce-of-feces-at-the-wall schtick so frustrating: While he has a rare ability to incite uproarious fits of laughter with genuinely shrewd punch-lines, he does so with even rarer frequency. Ted 2, like all of MacFarlane’s output to date, was never going to be a smart, consistent piece of work — nor does it even care to be, and that’s fine. His trademark cutaway gags, hackneyed insults, and callow toilet-humor aren’t the real tragedy; it’s that he will inevitably be rewarded at the box office after exuding minimal effort after minimal effort. In other words, the joke’s on us.
