Ted 2 (1/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 115 minutes.

Not for children.

One would think that good-looking, clean cut personable writer/director Seth MacFarlane, was a person with good values. But here’s what he said on national TV to Bill Maher, “I like a good A—F--- as much as the next guy.” He is a vulgarian who shows in this film that he represents the worst of Hollywood. Here he presents one stomach-churning crudity after another and represents them as comedy. Filled with F-bombs and ridiculous situations that don’t even qualify as sophomoric, Ted 2, is an unfunny, vulgar sequel that aims for the lowest common denominator.

There are people in this film that would lead one to believe it would be a quality film, people like Mark Wahlberg, Morgan Freeman, and Amanda Seyfried, people I have come to admire as actors. The fact that they would read a script like this and think it was something they wanted to be a part of lessens my respect for them. Worse, Wahlberg is, in fact, the producer and prime mover of the film. Why Seyfried jumped in is beyond me, although, despite the many films in which the material was good and she did fine work. Here she has no protection because the material is so squalid.

When one is sitting through a movie which presents a teddy bear as a living, intelligent being, I guess the idea of realism has already been thrown out the window, but the situations that MacFarlane presents are so beyond the pale that they don’t even approach being humorous.

There are lots of cameos, but people like Warren Buffet add zero to the film. Jay Leno’s contribution is in extremely poor taste. It’s hard to believe he would agree to a scene like this. Actually the only humorous scene in the film involves Liam Neeson. So that’s one good minute out of 115, or a percentage of .008 of the film that provides anything that could possibly be referred to as entertainment.