Movie Review: Ted 2

In the summer of 2012, America fell in love with a talking teddy bear named Ted. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane's feature-film debut about the exploits of a foul-mouthed, marijuana-loving teddy bear and his human best friend John (Mark Wahlberg) was a widely praised smash-hit that went onto be the highest-grossing original R-rated comedy of all-time, making just shy of $219 million in the United States alone. Three years later, the thunder buddies have returned for another outrageous, nonsenscial adventure in Ted 2.

Ted 2 picks up five years after the original left off. Ted (voiced by MacFarlane) has just married his longtime girlfriend Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth) and John is in the middle of a deep depression following his divorce from Lori (Mila Kunis, who does not appear here). After the newlywed bliss wears off, Ted and Tammi-Lynn can not stop fighting , and eventually decide the only way to save their marriage is to have a child. After failing to find a sperm donor and finding out that Tami-Lynn can not bear children after years of heavy drug use, the couple try to adopt a child. During the adoption process, Ted is told that he and Tammi-Lynn can not adopt a child because he not is legally recognized as a person. Ted's attempt to adopt a child causes a ripple effect as he subsequently loses his job and has his marriage to Tami-Lynn annulled because of the ruling that he is property and not a person. With the aide of a young lawyer (Amanda Seyfried) and John, Ted takes his fight to be recognized as a person to court with the hope that that his life can return to the way it once was.

For the first half of the film, Ted 2 seems bound to repeat the hilarity of the original. MacFarlane's off-the wall pop-culture references, clever crude humor and use of completely unexpected cameos lead to near-constant strong belly laughs and the three leads all kill their respective roles. Then around the halfway mark, the film kind of hits a wall. The jokes land a lot less frequently and the film gets way too committed to an unnecessary and really stupid subplot involving yet another scheme from Donny (Giovanni Ribsi) to kidnap Ted. With the exception of the first Ted, MacFarlane has repeatedly shown in both his small and big-screen projects that he has a really hard time creating consistently amusing material. He has a terrible habit of beating jokes into the ground and relying way too heavily on stupid toilet humor and cheap racial and sex jokes at times, and it definitely undermines the many strokes of brilliance he shows along the way. Ted 2 is still a really solid comedy, but if the comedic momentum hadn't slowed down in the second half, it could've been one of the all-time great comedic sequels.
4/5 Stars