John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is a 35 year old rental car associate whose best friend is a talking teddy bear named Ted (Seth MacFarlane) who came to life for John as a child after he made a wish. Now four years into a relationship with girlfriend Lori Collins (Mila Kunis), Lori finds herself wanting to move their relationship forward while John and Ted still maintain a carefree lifestyle of getting high and involved in shenanigans. Eventually Lori convinces John to talk to Ted about moving out, but John struggles balancing his friendship with Ted and relationship with Lori.
Having successfully re-launched Family Guy on the Fox network as well as sister show American Dad, five years after creating two high profile hit shows Series' shepherd Seth MacFarlane and frequent collaborators Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild came up for the basis of a third show which would be reformatted into what would become Ted. While 20th Century Fox showed interest in the project, management was hesitant to entrust MacFarlane with his requested $65 million budget for not only an R-Rated comedy, but one helmed by a first time director. MacFarlane then took the project to Universal who greenlit the film with the requested budget. Released in 2012, Ted became the breakout comedy hit of the Summer making $549 million worldwide against its $65 million budget and even attained solid critical reception as well. Ted's success allowed MacFarlane to parlay his success into other ventures like relaunching the Cosmos docuseries and of course his pet project The Orville, but Ted itself hasn't aged all that well in the 10 years since its release.
I will say the three leads of Ted with Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, and Seth MacFarlane have solid chemistry and create a strong dynamic that carries the film. In addition to the chemistry among the leads MacFarlane's film also boasts a good supporting cast with the likes of Patrick Warburton, Patrick Stewart as the narrator, Joel McHale, and a very funny extended cameo from star of 1980s Flash Gordon Sam J. Jones playing a fictionalized version of himself in probably the film's funniest segment.
The downside with Ted is unfortunately due to the nature of Seth MacFarlane's style of humor which is built upon references. Now unlike Seltzer and Friedberg's "Movie Movies" that put in references because they're trying to tap into cultural consciousness for the sake of suckering people in, MacFarlane is actually able to capture the humor from his references (for the most part). But the movie is heavily ingrained in a very narrow slice of time with references built in to the Adam Sandler movie Jack & Jill, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Lautner and the cultural relevance of some of these people or events has waned considerably with time and because these references aren't as fresh in your mind as they were 10 years ago some of the jokes feel less on target. A point that wasn't great even when I first saw this movie was the subplot of Ted's stalkers Donny and his son Robert played by Giovanni Ribisi and Aedin Mincks respectively. While both are good actors with Ribisi being a reliable character actor and Mincks currently starring Cobra Kai, they're not all that funny here and are just weird and creepy which only serves to lead us to a chase climax that really didn't need to be in the movie.
I was reminded of the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost movie Paul from the year before Ted that featured Frost and Pegg as two comic book geeks who have a road trip with a CGI alien played by Seth Rogen and both Paul and Ted are very similar (down to their one syllable name titles) but Paul built itself as an homage to science fiction classics of the 70s and 80s as well as geek culture so it's aged more gracefully in comparison to Ted which feels more sitcomy and tied to various cultural and social mindsets of the era that have lost their appeal.
Ted opened a lot of doors for Seth MacFarlane as a producer, but it's not a movie that has stood the test of time. While it has some solid leads and some amusing moments littered here and there, the movie feels heavily tied to its point in time with explicit references made to pop culture "flavors of the month" that even people who watched the movie in theaters most likely forgot about within a year.
Having successfully re-launched Family Guy on the Fox network as well as sister show American Dad, five years after creating two high profile hit shows Series' shepherd Seth MacFarlane and frequent collaborators Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild came up for the basis of a third show which would be reformatted into what would become Ted. While 20th Century Fox showed interest in the project, management was hesitant to entrust MacFarlane with his requested $65 million budget for not only an R-Rated comedy, but one helmed by a first time director. MacFarlane then took the project to Universal who greenlit the film with the requested budget. Released in 2012, Ted became the breakout comedy hit of the Summer making $549 million worldwide against its $65 million budget and even attained solid critical reception as well. Ted's success allowed MacFarlane to parlay his success into other ventures like relaunching the Cosmos docuseries and of course his pet project The Orville, but Ted itself hasn't aged all that well in the 10 years since its release.
I will say the three leads of Ted with Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, and Seth MacFarlane have solid chemistry and create a strong dynamic that carries the film. In addition to the chemistry among the leads MacFarlane's film also boasts a good supporting cast with the likes of Patrick Warburton, Patrick Stewart as the narrator, Joel McHale, and a very funny extended cameo from star of 1980s Flash Gordon Sam J. Jones playing a fictionalized version of himself in probably the film's funniest segment.
The downside with Ted is unfortunately due to the nature of Seth MacFarlane's style of humor which is built upon references. Now unlike Seltzer and Friedberg's "Movie Movies" that put in references because they're trying to tap into cultural consciousness for the sake of suckering people in, MacFarlane is actually able to capture the humor from his references (for the most part). But the movie is heavily ingrained in a very narrow slice of time with references built in to the Adam Sandler movie Jack & Jill, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Lautner and the cultural relevance of some of these people or events has waned considerably with time and because these references aren't as fresh in your mind as they were 10 years ago some of the jokes feel less on target. A point that wasn't great even when I first saw this movie was the subplot of Ted's stalkers Donny and his son Robert played by Giovanni Ribisi and Aedin Mincks respectively. While both are good actors with Ribisi being a reliable character actor and Mincks currently starring Cobra Kai, they're not all that funny here and are just weird and creepy which only serves to lead us to a chase climax that really didn't need to be in the movie.
I was reminded of the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost movie Paul from the year before Ted that featured Frost and Pegg as two comic book geeks who have a road trip with a CGI alien played by Seth Rogen and both Paul and Ted are very similar (down to their one syllable name titles) but Paul built itself as an homage to science fiction classics of the 70s and 80s as well as geek culture so it's aged more gracefully in comparison to Ted which feels more sitcomy and tied to various cultural and social mindsets of the era that have lost their appeal.
Ted opened a lot of doors for Seth MacFarlane as a producer, but it's not a movie that has stood the test of time. While it has some solid leads and some amusing moments littered here and there, the movie feels heavily tied to its point in time with explicit references made to pop culture "flavors of the month" that even people who watched the movie in theaters most likely forgot about within a year.