CHICAGO – While it’s cruder and it can’t quite match the original “Ted,” “Ted 2” is still funnier than it has any right to be. It is unmistakably a Seth MacFarlane production, and there are a million reasons why this movie shouldn’t work, chief among them a plot that attempts to plop a foul mouthed talking teddy bear into a moralistic legal parable about civil rights. But I can’t deny I laughed throughout, almost despite myself.
Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
It’s less a movie than a collection of scenes strung back to back. After an elaborate and largely joyless Busby Berkeley inspired title sequence, the plot revolves around Ted and new wife Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). When they try to adopt a baby, the government challenges Ted’s personhood and declares him property instead. So Ted and buddy Mark Wahlberg enlist a pot-smoking civil rights lawyer (Amanda Seyfried) to take his case, and win Ted back his basic human rights.
Seth MacFarlane throws in a lot of racial humor as they try to make the parallel between Ted’s plight and slavery (complete with obligatory viewing of “Roots”). It’s a desperate attempt to both push buttons and provide some narrative cover – as it gives MacFarlane a stage to make courtroom wisecracks in one scene, while also making gags about the prevalence of black penises on the internet in another.
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