Ted 2
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Seth McFarlane (voice), Amanda Seyfried, Jessica Barth, Giovanni Ribisi, Patrick Warburton, Patrick Stewart (voice), Morgan Freeman, Liam Neeson, Sam J. Jones, Michael Dorn, John Slattery, John Carroll Lynch, Dennis Haysbert, Tom Brady, Jay Leno
Directed by: Seth MacFarlane
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
2015

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: The state declares Ted (Seth MacFarlane) to be property, not a person. He and John work with an inexperienced lawyer (Amanda Seyfried) to try to prove he is a person.

Review:

Tim: After the very funny Ted, I was looking forward to the sequel. Unfortunately, Ted 2 follows the usual comedy sequel route- it's not nearly as good nor as funny as the first film. It's a bit of a head-scratcher why this is. Seth MacFarlane is clearly a funny guy, so it's hard to know what went wrong here.

I would say that one of the issues is the story. This is a little odd, because I love the idea of Ted having to prove he is a person, not a piece of property. That's a fascinating direction for a comedy movie about a talking teddy bear who loves to smoke pot. It's unexpected, and there's some interesting social commentary that the film makes. So, I love the idea, but I just didn't love the execution. The story isn't all that engaging or compelling- do we really care (or do we really question) how it's all going to turn out? It felt a bit too predictable to me. Plus, even though the direction is different, far too many aspects of the first film are recycled. Did we really need Giovanni Ribisi's character of Donny. The kidnapping plot was one of the weakest aspects of the original film, and yet, we get that exact same subplot here. It's a bizarre choice and it gave this film a feeling of "been there, done that". I have no idea why MacFarlane chose to go down a road he'd already traveled. It's one of the more odd choices I've seen. I love Giovanni Ribisi, but he had no business appearing in this film.

I also thought that losing Mila Kunis and replacing her with Amanda Seyfried was a bad move. One, I don't think Seyfried is half as interesting as Kunis. Her character perfectly fits with Mark Wahlberg's and Ted's, so there's really no drama or anything especially interesting there. I understand not being able to get the whole cast back, but this was at least a minor quibble I had.

Mark Wahlberg is fine playing John again. He has a number of funny scenes. The best aspect of his performance is how serious he takes the whole Ted business. You almost start to believe Ted is real, based on Wahlberg's convincing performance. I liked seeing Morgan Freeman here, although he doesn't have anything really interesting to do. Liam Neeson was funny in a completely pointless cameo performance. I suppose I laughed, although it did nothing to add to the main story. The other supporting cast members were good.

I really wanted to like Ted 2. It does have a number of very funny moments throughout the film- there's no way a talented guy like Seth MacFarlane wouldn't be able to make us laugh. The problem is that in between those humorous moments, we get a lackluster story that often recycles plot points from the first film. That means that while this isn't a terrible movie (it made me laugh too much for it to be bad), it's not quite a good one, either. It represents a clear drop in quality from the original. When you add in the surprising drop in box office (from $218 million for the first movie to only $81 million for this one), this is very likely the end of the Ted movies. That's a shame because there was certainly unrealized potential for this budding franchise. Still, comedy sequels are hard to pull off, and there's many worse ones out there. Ted 2 is an okay film, but it's hard not to be somewhat disappointed in this effort.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Ted, A Million Ways to Die in the West