Review of Ted 2 (2015) by Patrick S — 20 Jan 2016

Genuinely kinda surprised how much I actually enjoyed this movie, considering that I thought the first film wasn't very good. It's not bad, but it was just an inconsistent movie, there would be long stretches of time where there wasn't a single joke or the jokes that were there weren't any good.

I felt that part of it was the fact that it was Seth MacFarlane's (along with fellow Family Guy writers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild) first live-action film. While scripted series are more limiting in terms on the running length per episode, usually 22-45 minutes on TV, you can also tell a more satisfyingly complex story over the course of several seasons, like Breaking Bad, where you see characters change in ways that you wouldn't have expected.

While there are limitations in films, nobody in their right mind would play a 7-hour film in theaters, unless it was an experimental, art-house theater, you have much more time to tell a story. And I don't think that Seth.

Alec and Wellesley used that time to tell an effective story, at least in the first film. Nor were they able to maintain a consistent comedic tone, it just felt like rejected Family Guy jokes, like they weren't good enough for the show.

Think about that for a second if you've watched show's decline in quality ever since it came back on the air. And the Ted jokes were the rejected ones. But I digress, I was pleasantly surprised by how much of an improvement this film is over the first one.

It's not one of the best sequels ever made, but it has a tighter focus on story, even if it might not be great, and the comedy is actually consistent. There's a lot of jokes and while not all of them might work, the ratio is considerably better than Ted.

I actually laughed at a good mount of the jokes in this movie. They're still pretty much Family Guy jokes, but at least this time they're jokes from a good episode of Family Guy and not necessarily ones that were rejected.

It's not like anything in the film was hilarious, at least to me, but at least the movie made me laugh. The highlights, really, have to be Patrick Warburton and Michael Dorn, really here so they can make the joke about them playing the Tick and Worf, respectively, by having them wear the costumes at Comic Con.

These two are gay, jock assholes and it might sound silly, but I thought it was funny. Amanda Seyfried is also a welcome addition and she's a good sport about it, particularly the jokes about her having Gollum eyes.

I do think, however, that Seth, Alac and Wes haven't learned their lessons from the first Ted and A Million Ways...in that this is still too long for its own good. A Million Ways is the guiltiest of this as that had 40 minutes of good material and 70 minutes of nothing.

At least this movie has a better balance, I don't think it's a movie that ever drags, they throw enough at you in terms of jokes that you don't really notice that the story halts in parts, but this movie shouldn't be 5 minutes shy of two hours.

It just shouldn't. But, with that said, I did think the movie was as paced as well as it could have considering it's almost two hours long. It never feels like it's that long. The cast is good and they seem to be having a blast, so that always helps.

Like I said, the script has a lot of jokes, a lot of them good and some of them that miss the mark, but, it bears repeating, the ratio is considerably better this time out than it was in the first film.

I suppose that's about it, it's weird that the audience reception to this film wasn't as positive as the first one, I never expected the professional reviews to be good, but this is pretty a better movie than the first one in almost every category.

Yes, the novelty of seeing a foul-mouthed teddy bear might have worn off, but it's still a better movie. At least to me. So I had fun watching this. Won't ever watch it again, but I would recommend this as a Redbox rental.

Now if only Family Guy showed the same level of improvement.