Ted 2

 TED 2

Director : Seth MacFarlane

Year : 2015

Genre : Comedy

Rating : *

 

There is a real smugness to Seth MacFarlane that is really starting to annoy the hell out of me. Having made millions with the TV hit comedy 'Family Guy', his transition from TV to cinema has been a somewhat rocky one. 2012's 'Ted' was both a critical and commercial smash whereas last years 'A Million Ways To Die In The West', while a moderate box office success, was seen by many, including me, to be one of the absolute worst movies of the past decade. His notoriously bad hosting skills at the 2013 Academy Awards ceremony didn't help his reputation at all and while 'Family Guy' is still one of the most popular shows on television, it certainly doesn't have the astonishing viewing numbers it once had.

However, despite all of this, MacFarlane still clearly (and quite wrongly) considers himself to be one of the funniest and most insightful comedians working today and defiantly returns with 'Ted 2', a very poorly written and horrifically unfunny sequel to the 2012 original which, while passingly funny, certainly didn't deserve half the money or plaudits it got. Continuing the story of the lewd, crude talking bear (voiced by MacFarlane) and his best friend John (Mark Wahlberg), 'Ted 2' sees the titular toy wanting to marry and have a child with his long-time love Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). However after getting hitched, things hit a speed bump when it is revealed that Ted is not seen in the eyes of the law to be human and therefore has no rights. Teaming up with lawyer Samantha L. Jackson (Amanda Seyfried), Ted and John go on a barrier-breaking journey to battle the courts and get Ted the rights he deserves. Along the way, we get the same tired sex jokes, stoner gags and wildly appropriate and offensively incorrect humour that infests every MacFarlane project like Dutch Elm disease. 

 

While there are few choice moments where Ted and Walhberg have good chemistry together, the film predominantly relies on some of the most useless and unfunny humour I've seen all year to get by and while this scatter-shot style of comedy may work in a half an hour episode of 'Family Guy', stretched to two hours, it becomes almost unbearable. MacFarlane has proved himself to be a competent and very talented comedic writer in the past and while I may not be his biggest fan, there have been a few choice moments in his projects which have genuinely made me laugh hard. But completely random and uncalled for jokes about Robin Williams, Charlie Hebdo or 9/11 aren't funny, satirical or subversive - they're just mean-spirited and spiteful. There's no cleverness to them. They're just offensive for the sake of being of being offensive. And that is Seth MacFarlane in a nutshell; a man who thinks he is a lot funnier and a lot more culturally insightful than he actually is. To soften the blow of this vile tidal wave of hate and prejudice, he tries to balance this needlessly offensive comedy with saccharinely slushy melodrama but the scales notably tip in favour of the former.