Review: Ted

Let me say this right up front, “Ted” is very, very, funny, BUT DON’T TAKE YOUR KIDS!

Some of the theater staff told me some people had taken their kids. Don’t.

“Ted” is raw and raunchy humor for adults. Of course kids would like it, the same way they like “Family Guy” if you can’t get them to bed at night. It’s full of cuss words, fart jokes, casual drug use, and some pretty gross stuff. And no wonder, “Ted” was scripted, directed, and voiced by FG creator Seth MacFarlane.

It’s also got deadpan absurd narration in Patrick Stewart’s stentorian tones, and pretty spot-on observations about overgrown boys who refuse to grow up.

It begins in an idyllic New England suburb at Chirstmastime as the local boys are celebrating the simple joys of the season: building snowmen, having snowball fights, and beating up the Jewish kid. Little John Bennett (Bretton Manley/Mark Wahlberg) is so unpopular not even the Jewish kid getting the snot beat out of him will give him the time of day.

Johnny gets a teddy bear for Christmas. That night he wishes on a falling star, and the bear comes to life.

Ted is a nine day wonder, goes on Carson, and becomes a has-been when his 15 minutes are up.

Twenty-seven years later Johnny and Ted are slacker stoners. Johnny has an adequate if unexciting job at a car rental office and is slated to replace the manager when he moves up.

He’s also got an incredibly hot live-in girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) of four years, who’d kind of like a ring by now. She’d also like Ted to move out and give them some space. Especially after they come home to find Ted partying with four hookers, one of whom has defecated on the floor in a game of truth-or-dare. (I said gross.)

So Ted gets a place of his own, and a job clerking at a grocery store, and a hot but not-to-bright girlfriend Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth,) and keeps getting promoted precisely because of the outrageous behavior he hopes will get himself fired.

Ted tries to lure Johnny back into his slacker life, and succeeds when he throws a party and Sam Jones (playing himself) shows up.

Who?

Sam J. Jones was the star of the 1980 box office bomb/cult classic “Flash Gordon” which was a formative influence in the lives of Ted and Johnny.

Sam invites Ted and Johnny to drink shots and snort cocaine with predictable results. Boy loses girl.

Johnny gets another chance when Ted convinces an old lover Nora Jones (playing herself) to let Johnny have the mike at her concert to sing a love song to Lori, who has come with her obnoxious boss Rex (Joel McHale) who has designs on her.

Further plot complications ensue, with action, adventure, and one more touch of magic before all is resolved.

Hoo boy this movie is hard to classify! It’s not magical realism, it’s more like realistic magicalism. Bringing Ted to life is the only intrusion of magic into the real world, the rest is played absolutely, hilariously straight.

It’s an original twist on an old plot, the kid with an imaginary playmate who has to say goodby to become a man. Except in this case the imaginary playmate is obnoxiously real.

Wahlberg and Kunis have real chemistry that transcends genres, for those who saw “Max Payne.” MacFarlane is his usual gross/funny self, only edgier. Nora
Jones is hilarious in her cameo, and Tom Skerritt playing himself has precisely one line – which is also hilarious.

Go see it. You’ll hate yourself in the morning but you’ll laugh all through it.

But of course, in this day and age the killjoys have to have their say.

At one point Johnny tells Rex, “From one man to another, I hope you get Lou Gehrig’s disease!”

Traci Bisson, a spokesperson for the ALS Therapy Alliance, said, “We want to make it clear that ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, is not a laughing matter for people and families suffering from this life-threatening illness. The punch line in the movie Ted comes at the expense of people afflicted with ALS.”

No it doesn’t. And if you know anyone with ALS, get them to see it too because they could certainly use some laughs.

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