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News & ArtsFriday, June 29, 2012
Film Ted: Like a More Ribald ALF
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 12:43 PM
- Ted is brought to you by Axe Body Spray. That ought to fire off some warning shots, right there.
I can hear you say, “Well, so what? Aren’t most comedies, hopefully, a huge fucking pile of jokes?” And the answer to your question is, “no.” A good comedy is a series of jokes, and the jokes work together in service to a story. They advance the story, they fill out the story—think of a good musical, replace the songs with jokes, and you have an idea of what I mean. Bridesmaids was a great comedy because it was a series of well-crafted jokes about characters and their interactions. Hell, even a good stand-up set from, say, Louis C.K. is a series of jokes that construct a story about a fictionalized Louis C.K. They may feel randomly placed, but every joke has a reason to be there.
Instead, Ted is a crappy framework of a movie—about a grown man (Mark Wahlberg) whose childhood teddy bear came to life—with a bunch of jokes stuck to it. You’ve got pop culture jokes, self-aware jokes about what a flimsy premise the movie has, and gay panic jokes. Some of the jokes are funny. But many of them aren’t. And none of them are essential to the story, because the story is incredibly inessential.
According to modern popular cinema, the single greatest problem that the United States faces in the 21st century is youngish white men who just can’t manage to grow up and accept adult responsibilities.
Almost every comedy in the last ten years is about a man-child who has to learn to grow up and find responsible adult love while still retaining his essential man-childness. The American moviegoing public supposedly can’t get enough of that fucking story; we’ll go see it again and again and again.
John, Mark Wahlberg’s character in Ted, is the man-child of the week. His childhood is manifested in Ted, a teddy bear that came to life because of a wish John made when he was a boy and then just stuck around. But! John needs to grow up because he’s in love with a great woman (Mila Kunis) who wants him to grow up. But! Ted wants John to keep doing childish things—snort coke, fuck hookers, and make fun of bad movies—with him. And! A creepy man (Giovanni Ribisi) wants to kidnap Ted and keep him for himself.
If you are at or above a fifth-grade reading level, you can probably put these three sentences together into a screenplay pretty easily. The characters in Ted make fun of movies like this—crappy, cliched by-the-numbers tripe—and they’re starring in a movie just like the movies they make fun of. Somehow, the smirk Ted puts on is supposed to make that all right. It doesn’t.
At least the acting is pretty good. Wahlberg, for some unknown reason, is convincing as an idiot with a Boston accent. Kunis dives gamely into the sausagefest and rolls around in it with great enthusiasm. And Ribisi’s stalker is an excellent remount of a very well-worked-over stereotype. The cast’s devotion to the weak material—and the excellent CGI powering the Ted effects, with his threadbare patches from years of cuddling—are enough to momentarily make you forget how bad it all is. But then one of those lame, defensive self-aware jokes pop up—someone mentions that Ted sounds just like Peter Griffin from MacFarlane’s Family Guy, someone refers to Ted’s resemblance to ALF—and you remember that you’re watching a bad movie. No matter how good a couple of the jokes are, you can’t shake the feeling that there’s an unforgivable laziness behind Ted.
Filmmakers forget this, over and over, if it's not on the page, it won't be on the screen.
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Kunis dives gamely into the sausagefest and rolls around in it with great enthusiasm.
NICE. *leers knowingly, high fives nearest McFarlane-voiced talking animal sidekick*
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Was The Hangover maudlin?
No it was not. It was a pile of jokes.
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Definitely piles and piles of jokes...but each had, to some degree, a story to hang those jokes upon...a story with consequences.
I don't mind a pile of jokes. I don't even mind a movie where you could tell the script was just an outline and talented improv-experienced performers just trusted their instincts (though, I hope that movie has a great editor.)
As far as Ted goes--ehhhhh, I'll probably catch it a few years from now when it comes to Netflix streaming.
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Personally, I think it's okay to say something was just okay without disparaging the funny and talented women who were involved in it. But that's just me.
it's also giant mistake to think that the "man-child" story/archetype is anything new, or indicative of the stagnancy of modern popular culture in the "last ten years"
Marx Brothers - man-children
I Love Lucy - woman-child
Woody Allen - man-child
Murray/Ramis/Belushi - man-children
Seinfeld - man-children
You even cite Bridesmaids and Louis CK's routines as examples of good comedy, when they are completely based around the woman/man-child archetype that you are apparently sick of. Throughout Bridesmaids, Wiig's childish and irresponsible nature puts her at odds with the other characters. In the end, she finds responsible adult love with the police officer and yet retains her woman-childness (she fucking dances to Wilson-Philips). And Louis CK is a erudite inter-city liberal artist who Tweets about dicks, shit, AIDS, and Jews. His whole comedy is about his grown-up liberal nature being at odds with his offensive childishness. Come on!
Your analysis about comedy is contradictory and painful. It's obviously okay to like one thing and not another thing. (I like The Fifth Element and I don't like Blade Runner.) But your writing is neither thoughtful nor entertaining. It's sloppy and second-rate.
My problem with this review is that the criticisms are just piled on. By way of contrast, if you read Armond White's review of "A.I. Artificial Intelligence"* you'll see there's a series of pompous bloviations forming a cohesive and hilarious whole.
*Talk about a creepy and annoying Teddy.
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*fart jokes, another animated spin-off*
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Just goes to show you even our side of the political spectrum is capable of putting out tons of shit.
Credit where credit is due: not all of his work may be good, but Seth McFarlane is a talented guy who does have the capacity to create entertaining and even sometimes poignant humorous stories.
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The movie was obviously written with young males in mind, and Axe was simply the young male product that offered the most cash. It has nothing to do with anything else.
Now as to why Axe still exists, that is a whole other issue.
The fantastic _Airplane!_ reference in this movie was especially apt. I remember many people who HATED _Airplane!_ because it was just an assault of jokes and puns. I love a movie like _Airplane!_ or like _Ted_ because sometimes you just want to go in, turn off your overworked brain, and laugh like you haven't laughed in awhile. I will watch _Ted_ again not because it's brilliant cinema but because it serves its purpose like many movies before it: it's funny.
I was wondering if it would be like The Dictator, which was awful for a Sasha Baron Cohen film.
Folks, the review is a about the movie, not McFarlane's career.
Yes, hes amazingly talented.
No, this movie has no plot.
Yes, it is the height of laziness to produce a half-assed movie, especially since Seth IS so farging talented. He could have worked a little harder to develop the story, bu he KNOWS it will be a moneymaker regardless of the effort put into it. He knows this because he's blazing hot (at least with 18-25 males) and those bastards are all going to see it at least once. Now he doesn't have to work so hard anymore.
I'd call that lazy.
Instead it was a CGI-animated former rapper making dick jokes (with a stuffed animal). I should’ve stormed out of the theater, but there were far too many other scientists sitting in close proximity to me.
Are we still talking about Medea?
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