Film Review | Ted

Comedies are the casual movie going experience of choice: they're easier to take in than most other offerings in cinemas - especially in this heat, and when action blockbusters are growing bigger and more serious by the minute (see: The Dark Knight Rises).

The problem is that more often than not, the supposedly funny stuff is also indisputably crap (see: anything by or featuring Adam Sandler).

Enter Ted. Or rather, enter Seth McFarlane. The creator of adult animated series Family Guy and American Dad breaks onto the big screen with this unlikely comedy (unlikely in that it's hard to imagine it being genuinely funny) about a thirty-something slacker and his talking teddy bear best friend.

Thought he was a socially inept young boy, John (Mark Whalberg) found true friendship in his teddy bear Ted - a Christmas present from his parents who started to speak and walk around after John wished as much (upon a star, naturally).

The talking teddy (voiced by Seth McFarlane himself) soon becomes a pop culture sensation... giving way to a successful celebrity career - which appears to flop as soon as it's blossomed.

Now in a stable relationship with his girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis), John, edging past 30, still appears to be stuck in adolescence, spending most of his free time getting high with Ted (with whom he lives), and showing no ambition of moving past his dead-end job.

On the night of their fourth anniversary, the couple's romantic dinner ends on a downcast note when Lori gives John an ultimatum: if he wants to save their relationship, he has to force Ted to move out.

When John breaks the news to the potty-mouthed teddy bear, he assures him that though they will live apart - and though Ted must now find his own apartment and, consequently, job - they will still remain best of friends.

But this balancing of loyalties doesn't quite go as planned...

Ted was an instant success, even locally. Eden Cinemas even decided on a last-minute reshuffle of The Dark Knight Rises to accommodate it in one of their more spacious and prestigious screens.

On the one hand this may seem a bit strange (it's essentially a weird hybrid of Disney features and the recent batch of 'dirty' comedies about man-children) but it's also clear that McFarlane's brand of humour is a winning concoction.

As a talking companion, Ted is synonymous with other McFarlane creations like the fan-favourite, erudite-but-evil baby Stewie Griffin, as well as the intellectual downbeat dog, Brian. It's a credit to the film that such a special-effect dependent, key character blends in seamlessly, because we're not watching this for technical dazzle, but for laughs.

Which we do get. Though some of it is dependent on at least a cursory knowledge of American culture - Boston in particular - and though it's laced with pop culture references that not everyone might respond to (a particularly winning set piece resurrects the memory of the perennial 80s cheese-fest Flash Gordon), there's a genuinely wacky energy throughout the whole thing that separates it from the usual comedy dross.

And although Whalberg remains inept at transmitting any real emotion - he insists on a blank-eyed naïvete that's only useful for half the film - a case could actually be made for Ted being an adequately-judged drama about growing up (or, as it happens, not).

The joke, of course, is that a perennially cute teddy also happens to be a drug-addled, bad mouthed, bad influence of a friend. But he can turn on the 'cute' button just as easily as anything else, when the film calls for it - and it works.

Like a lot of recent American comedies that have made a splash (I'm thinking of the Judd Apatow school of Knocked Up, Superbad et al) Ted relies on a now-typical mix of grotesque set pieces and a slacker dynamic, but McFarlane's well-honed grasp of joyful political incorrectness - delivered through a mildly surrealist lens - lends a welcome cartoony feel.

A third act involving Giovanni Ribisi as an unhinged father to an equally disturbed child feel a bit tacked on, even if the ominous duo, both Ted fans, are prefigured earlier on.

Unlike an episode of Family Guy, a film needs to have three solid acts to be satisfying. But though it may not be as polished as it could be, McFarlane's meandering little tale is worth taking in.