A movie like Ted has a low bar. Fortunately, Seth McFarlane is great at jumping over low bars. His shows like Family Guy and the Cleveland Show usually aim for the lowest common denominator, and occasionally hit levels of greatness on par with the best TV out there. Ted treads similar movie territory: it mostly delivers on its comedy, and has occasional bits of greatness to make the movie more than just a comedy that is going through the motions. As a directorial debut, it is a solid start.
Through a Patrick Stewart voiceover, we meet John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) a kid so bad at making friends he longs to be the Jewish kid getting beaten up. After receiving a Teddy Bear for Christmas on his 8th birthday, John makes a wish on a falling star that Teddy could become alive so they could be friends forever. After Ted (voice of Seth McFarlane) comes to life, his celebrity follows the trajectory of Cory Feldman: he has his fifteen minutes, and then he settles back into his “high-on” life with John. In the meantime, John has grown up and met Lori (Mila Kunis). As John and Lori’s relationship grows stronger, John starts realizing he is going to have to choose between Lori and Ted.
Like most comedies, Ted starts out strong, but flames out in the last 30 minutes when it becomes too involved in its own plot. Like Family Guy, Ted works best when it is just a series of set pieces with Mark Wahlberg and the CGI bear interacting with one another (because of the movie, McFarlane makes sure this is an R-rated interaction). All of these scenes range from moderately funny to gut busting. I laughed aloud several times. The scenes work because Wahlberg plays it completely straight. The best pieces involve a party Ted throws involving John and Ted’s childhood hero: Flash Gordon (Sam Jones, very self aware) and the brawl between John and Ted, in which Wahlberg has to fight a CGI’ed bear, and pulls it off very well.
The rest of the subplots are mostly time wasted. Patrick Warburton, Norah Jones, and Tom Skerritt make small appearances (Warburton, and his lover who I will not reveal, have the best cameo). Lori’s work complications involving her boss (Joel McHale) are not that interesting, just like Lori. Fortunately, Mila Kunis takes a poorly developed character and gives her enough substance to make the audience believe why John would want to end up with her. The conflict between Ted and Lori is not properly studied because of a subplot involving a crazed fan of Ted (played by Giovanni Ribisi). Part of me thinks that Ted might have worked better as a wierd love triangle between Ted, John, and Lori, and scrapping the fan aspect, since they did properly explore Ted’s, um, adult qualities.
By keeping the story flowing, Ted moves along at a light pace, keeping the audience lauging as it goes. The relationships of the leads, while not deep, are not paper-thin either. By setting the bar low, Seth McFarlane guaranteed a success with his directorial debut. Hopefully with his next feature, he can get a little higher, no pun intended.