Ted 2

I probably was gonna like this movie no matter what. I am a sucker for anything Seth Macfarlane. Ted continues to be one of my favorite comedies of all time. While most people didn't love A Million Ways to Die in the West, I actually really loved it. Its definitely a Seth MacFarlane thing. If you like Family Guy, if you like that kind of humor, chances are you're going to like all those movies and chances are you are going to like Ted 2.

The beginning of Ted starts with Ted and his girlfriend Tami-Lynn (played by Jessica Barth) getting married. Now to start off, I'm not wild that Ted 2 focused more on Ted than it did on John (played by Mark Wahlberg). Personally, I kind of thought that Tami-Lynn and Ted's relationship was more of a joke than a relationship I was suppose to take seriously. I mean yeah its funny that they got married, but the movie mainly focuses on them and their relationship is a big part of the movie.

It also was a little weird right off the bat that Lori (Mila Kunis's character from the first movie) was not in this film. There's an explanation as to why, but she's just gone and honestly, it kind of negates all of the first movie. The way I understand it, the reason to cut Kunis out was Macfarlane's creative thought process and the fact that Mila Kunis was pregnant but its a choice that I had to disagree with from the get go.

A year passes and Ted and Tami-Lynn's marriage isn't too great. They're fighting and throwing shit at one another, overall, it was hilarious. They exemplify the horrible stereotypes of people from Boston. Ted's wearing a wife beater, they're cussing one another out, it was great. But soon after that they decide to have a child.

So the first part of the movie is basically Ted and John trying to find a sperm donor because obviously Ted doesn't have a penis... cause he's a Teddy Bear. But through the process of finding a way to get a baby, its revealed that in the eyes of the law, Ted is not seen as a person.

This not only bars Ted and Tami-Lynn from getting a child but a lot of other services, especially the annulment of his and Tami-Lynn's marriage.

Then the movie takes another shift. It goes away from Ted and Tami-Lynn trying to get a baby, to John and Ted suing the state of Massachusetts for his civil rights.

Ted and John go and hire a lawyer by the name of Samantha Jackson (Sam L Jackson HA. HA.) (played by Amanda Seyfried) And the three of them open up a case to sue the government.

Now the structure of this movie was not exactly out of the blue. If you've watched anything from Seth MacFarlane, especially Family Guy, you know that lots of the time those stories will start with one thing, then move onto the next thing and the final product of the movie will not be how it started.

The problem I have with that is that that structure works a lot better with Family Guy, on TV. I don't think it works as well with a feature film. In an episode of Family Guy, it doesn't need to make sense, it just has to be funny. As a feature film, it just feels convoluted.

Furthermore, what made the first Ted so good was how much it had the flair of MacFarlane but didn't feel like an episode of Family Guy. This movie felt a little bit more like Family Guy which I wasn't exactly satisfied with. There were actual cut aways in this movie. Were they good? I mean... sorta? Some of them I enjoyed but some of them were not as good.

Another thing worth mentioning about this movie is the endless cameos in it. In the first Ted and even in A Million Ways to Die in the West, there were cameos but they were a little bit subtle. Like Ewan McGregor in A Million Ways to Die, or else they were pretty limited, like Ryan Reynolds... well in both.

But in this one, its like they weren't even trying for subtlety, its like Seth MacFarlane sat down and called all his famous friends and said, do you want to be in my movie? I'll write you in.

Now, I will say, some of the cameos were hilarious. If you've seen the movie, you'll know what I mean when I say Liam Neeson is fucking hilarious in this movie. I lost my mind when his cameo came up. So its not the worst thing to have these cameos, I jus thought there were a lot of them.

Then you've got all the pop culture references, which again, if you're a Seth MacFarlane fan, you'll know, this isn't out of line of work. Pop culture references are littered all of his work. But this kind of ties into the idea that I was talking about what works for films and what works for Family Guy.

The first Ted was good because it was working off the idea of a talking teddy bear and the guy who wished him alive. It was an original idea and it was hilarious.

This is still working off that original idea but it throws in a lot more pop culture references than it needed to.

Another thing that was a little bit unfortunate for me in this movie was the fact that a lot of the jokes from the trailer were just copy and pasted from the movie. Lots of times, the jokes are edited to either censor them (if its a green band trailer) or not give away the entire joke. And while there were a lot of jokes in the movie that I didn't see in the trailer, I had a lot of moments where I could really predict what was happening based on what I had seen in the trailer. Its a problem with the industry today where the trailers give A LOT away. I'm just sad that that was the case with this film.

And finally, there's the ending. I won't get into spoilers but all I'm going to say is that the ending of the movie is EXACTLY the same as the first movie. I'm not sure if they ran over budget, I'm not sure if MacFarlane just ran out of ideas, I don't know if they thought it would be hilarious and it just didn't work out the way they wanted to, or if they were just lazy, but this was the exact same ending to the movie that came out prior to this one.

Now I've been shitting on this movie with a lot of the things I didn't like. And frankly its because I was holding this movie to high standards. While I didn't think A Million Ways to Die in the West was a great movie, I still thought it was a creative idea. The first Ted is a hilarious original idea. This movie is not original...

But that doesn't make it a bad movie.

As I've said before, the cameo of Liam Neeson and some of the other ones were really funny. This movie has a lot of moments where I laughed my ass off. I laughed HARD. Short of its, there were cameos I liked and cameos I thought were there just for the sake of being there.

I thought while it was strange that Mila Kunis was not in this movie and I thought they really missed out not bringing her back, I thought Amanda Seyfried was a funny addition to the movie. I think it worked for the movie.

Mark Wahlberg and Seth MacFarlane continue, as always, to be comedic powerhouses.

While I thought the story got a little convoluted and tried to do too many things, I thought it was still fun. Putting Ted in a court room is a great location for a sequel and with the exception of the last ten minutes of the film being the same ending from the first Ted, I really do think Ted 2 is its own movie.

I think in a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the first Ted, 5 being A Million Ways to Die in the West, and 1 being The Cleveland Show, Ted 2 definitely falls between the first Ted and A Million Ways to Die in the West.

I'm really hoping that Ted 2 is one of those movies that I will see a couple times and enjoy the more times I see it. Again, its by no means a bad movie. I really enjoyed it. I just would have liked to see better because I know MacFarlane can do better than this movie.

Now the question is, do I want there to be a Ted 3...

I personally don't think they really need a Ted 3. Hell, I wasn't totally sure they needed a Ted 2, but I was optimistic about what MacFarlane could do. I was pretty optimistic that Ted would not turn into a The Hangover franchise if it got a sequel... Now I'm not too sure. If I was the one running the movies that MacFarlane is going to do in the future, I would say he'd do better to redeem himself with a new original property. That being said, if he does the work, I'm not oppose to another Ted movie.

Overall, Ted is a really, REALLY funny movie. Unfortunately, its not an overly original really, REALLY funny movie. It has a lot of work to do and I wish it could have been better. But I still enjoyed it and it was a fun ride.

But what did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also follow me on Twitter @cmhaugen24 to get updates on future movie news and reviews. You can also give me your thoughts on this movie there and send me your requests for future reviews.

I'll leave you with this. Here's Seth MacFarlane singing karaoke in his Family Guy voices. Enjoy!