Ted 2 packs more unhumorous stuffing within its formulaic synthetic fur. MacFarlane is a talented comedian, I’m sure of it. His profusely crude humour captivating millions with his legendary ‘Family Guy’ TV show. Even ‘Ted’ was tolerable to a certain degree, and that’s saying something. Yet here we are, with an inevitable sequel, that essentially felt like a glorified episode of the aforementioned animation. It’s cutaway structure for unrelated gags. Relentless wave of pointless cameos. Ted becoming Peter Griffin. Close your eyes, let the voices infiltrate your senses and you’ll soon realise it’s just ‘Family Guy’, just less funny. Ted now married and struggling to maintain his relationship, has his rights taken away when he is no longer viewed as person but property instead.
A particularly strong aspect to this comedy that more or less is the power source of its story, raising a civil rights lesson in ethics and morality. It was so *interesting* that Morgan Freeman himself got involved and slam dunked the jury with his God-like soothing voice. And despite Seyfried actually picking up the script’s remnants and transforming the scraps into a functional film, it’s utterly forgettable. So much so, that once Wahlberg becomes drowned in rejected semen samples (literally swimming with the sperm...), I experienced a moment of déjà vu (ironically, so did Ted). Surprisingly, I had seen the first half before. Yet it took me a decent forty minutes to encounter this epiphany, that’s how unmemorable this comedy truly is.
It exercises all of the same plot points from its predecessor, the inclusion of the mentally unhinged Donny and the friendly break-up between the leads cement this sentiment, and rarely explored new avenues. Sure the friendly chemistry remained intact, but only one or two lines made me frustratingly chuckle, mostly due to Warburton’s comedic execution (urgh, that voice...). Besides that, there’s nothing here. Same old MacFarlane profanity. Worth a squeeze if you enjoyed the first film, but exhausts its preset lines of dialogue extremely rapidly. “I love you”? Eh, please don’t.
