1/3
Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy,
has a quirky and crude sense of humor. In Family Guy and other stuff he's done, he often draws humor from his own nerdy fan base's inside jokes of
esoteric, little-known cult classic trivia (like Flash Gordon and Star Wars, to name a couple perennials). This
has made him, I can only imagine, a dork in real life, probably something of an outcast growing up, but ultimately popular and successfuly because of the crowd of fellow nerds who get his humor (and references). I dig that. We're all a little nerdy, aren't we? He’s
obviously an intellectual person, but I also think he uses his inside jokes and references as a way to show off, to earn his self-validity. It's almost an arogant humor, really. But let me do say that this odd quirkiness works in his 22 minute cartoons. Though crude and punchy, it's a funny show. A cartoon is different from a movie, however. On the silver screen, you have to have a longer plot development. Obviously, since he’s not used to writing screenplays, he couldn’t find a way to escape a god-awful cliché story line to keep the audience connected for two hours. You know the cliché story line, right?: protagonist must choose between an immature best friend and a serious girlfriend in order to grow up, accidentally pisses off girlfriend, they break up, he tries to get her back, goes through great distress and problems but gets her back and somehow everyone's learned something. I could probably list a hundred films with this basic structure.
I will concede, nonetheless, that I’ve often said that I can tolerate crappy story lines for actors’ quality natural humor (I think Pineapple Express is my favorite example of this, in that despite the predictable storyline, it was a hilarious movie experience because of James Franco, Danny McBride, and Seth Rogen). The humor in Ted, however, didn't quite hold up as well. There were just too many cheesy cartoon-style effects (Ted, the bear itself; cutaway joke scenes interrupting the present tense, like 30-second flashbacks; stupid sound effect plugins; bad narrator jokes; 80's humor, God help us; stupid fantasy cutaways, etc etc). It was an overload. We drowned in it.
On an unrelated note, the friend that I saw this with and I both agree that Mila Kunis is smoking hot here and very much in her prime at 28 years old! Damn. Giovanni Ribisi played a hilarious and very disturbing creepster and we almost needed more of his character.
In the end, MacFarlane is obviously in love with his nostalgic cheesy 80's and the city of Boston and his dorky self. I think this movie was more Seth's tribute to all that than to quality humor or writing. So I did laugh out loud in a couple of places, yes, but mainly I got annoyed and bored. Next time I want this humor, I'll just watch 22 minutes of Family Guy.
