Ted

This past spring I saw the the trailers on Youtube for the movie Ted and thought it looked a little interesting. Clearly the movie was nothing very edifying. Still some of the movies that I saw when I was a teenager and in my early twenties were not the kind you write home about.

The premise of the movie is sweet. A young boy in a suburb of Boston grows up and has trouble making friends. A funny scene right away has a young boy getting beat up by other neighborhood kids but they all stop, the beaters and the beatee to inform the boy, John Bennett, to go away and get lost.

For Christmas that year the boy gets a stuffed teddy bear, bigger than most, and he loves it. One night he wishes that the bear could be alive and they could be best friends forever. The next morning he wakes up and the bear is awake. Once the boy gets over the shock he is thrilled. Nothing special in this scenario, we have seen premises similar to this many times.

Fast forward 25 years however and the movie is very different than the sugary versions we have seen. Ted now is sitting on the couch next to John getting stoned. Ted, voiced by Seth McFarlane, is obscene, vulgar and rude. F this and F that are his very famous words.

Seeing a stuffed bear acting rude, getting stoned and swearing is funny, for a minute. There are surely lines and moments in this movie that made me laugh. There are also many scenes where my wife sitting next to me mouthed an OMG and made me feel guilty for subjecting her to it.

Mila Kunis plays John Bennett's longtime girlfriend. She has a successful job and is convinced that John is being held back by his stoner teddy bear. See, the movie is really little different in this way than many other movies we have seen where the girl does not like the best friend and issues an ultimatum. It is just in this case that ultimatum is about a teddy bear.

Have I seen dumber movies? Surely. Is Mark Wahlberg and his accent perfect for a loser from Boston? Yes. Is it funny to see the bear walking, cursing, and yes having intercourse? Actually yes, in places, very funny.

So my wife was mortified that she took our son to the movie, being R Rated he needed us to take him. It was pretty over the top in some of it's jokes. Still he did not look too scarred and he said he enjoyed it. I would not go see it again but I did laugh out loud once or twice. That must be worth something. And as I told my wife it surely was not as bad as Friends with Benefits.

Mila Kunis appears now to be the it actress. I am sure it does not translate to me. She is cute and appealing but for me at least there are quite a few actresses that are more easily seen in the girl next door role or girlfriend roles. Of course most of them probably would not do a movie like Ted.

So when it comes out on video, enjoy it, just make sure you do not expect too much. Prepare yourself as well for this, it has made a ton of money and a sequel would not be hard to do.