Review of Ted (2012) by Jeffrey N — 08 Oct 2014

Seth MacFarlane was finally allowed to go balls-out and take his vulgar, insulting, dry humor to an R-rated movie. And clearly he enjoyed it. Showing the blurry line between TV and movies these days, Ted is only slightly worse than his show, "Family Guy," tastefully speaking.

"Ted" is very funny with co-star Mark Wahlberg perfectly cast as a dim-witted Bostonian trying to grow up without needing his lifelong companion, "Ted.". The premise is genius, wrapping such vulgarity around a childish fantasy, but where "Ted" goes wrong for me is that it seemed entirely too much like everything else Seth has done.

Seth is obviously one of the funniest comedy writers out there, but what Seth needs to do is take some lessons from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. While Seth might be bold in his content, the delivery is always in a one-liner mode.

The South Park guys deliver their vulgarity is better stories, dialogue and with an honesty that they really aren't interested in sugar-coating the insult. Seth's writing always comes across as intentionally shocking with a back-handed , "what? What did say?" attitude afterward.

"Ted" was cute, very funny, but in a cowardly way. However, I can say that I'll never look at parsnips in the same way again.