Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Film Review: Ted

Remember when Seth MacFarlane was funny?  Yeah, me too.  It would be nice to see him do that again someday.  Sadly, the Family Guy creator's big screen directorial debut, Ted, is not where such a thing is going to happen.  Sure, there are some funny moments sprinkled throughout the film, and the surprise appearance of a certain one hit wonder-cum-iconic 1980's space hero elicits some rather loud guffaws from the nerdy side of the movie crowd (yeah, that would be where I am sitting), but overall, much like MacFarlane's Family Guy spinoff, The Cleveland Show, it is a crushing disappointment.  Crushing.

Now I am sure all those Family Guy haters out there - and you know who you are - are spewing venomous bile all across the Twittersphere and Blogosphere and whatever cybersphere is out there, not due to the film being a let down, but because they have some irrational hatred for anything and everything MacFarlane.  I on the other hand, along with many Family Guy fans out there I am sure, are spewing such venomous bile across all the known spheres due to the disappointing realization that Ted is not another Family Guy.  As well as The Simpsons Movie worked as a creatively elongated extension of that show, is the flip side of how poorly Ted works as anything resembling the humour of the writer/director's TV fare (that dreadful Cleveland Show aside).  Of course, unlike the aforementioned Simpson's movie, Ted is not supposed to be the Family Guy Movie, it is meant to be something else - not that MacFarlane ever gets too far away from his pop-culture wheelhouse.  

Family Guy related or not (and there is a quick mention of Peter Griffin hidden in here) Ted is a fart-joke riddled letdown of a movie.  The sharp-tongued wit of MacFarlane during the hey day years of the show, are all but gone here.  Acting more like the sad cousin of the post shark-jumping Family Guy, Ted is a handful of funny moments surrounded by a bloated dead horse that is being kicked all over the streets of blue collar Boston and right up the Green Monster of Fenway.  And even if we stop trying to find another Family Guy in here somewhere (and it is most certainly not here) and just let the film fly on its own merits, we still get what basically comes down to a big hunk of throwaway junk.  The ironic part of the whole thing is that the theme of the film is about getting rid of childish things and yet the whole film is one long pre-adolescent attempt at humour.  Perhaps MacFarlane should take his own advice.  Then again, maybe I am just bitter about the film not being another Family Guy.

No comments: