I have to admit that I was skeptical about the movie “Ted” when I initially saw the trailers a few months back. After all, how good can a movie about a teddy bear coming to life actually be?
Well seeing was believing, as it was two hours of creativity, emotion, and definitely a lot of laughter.
The movie starts back in the 1980’s in a Boston neighborhood with a little boy who has no friends. At Christmas his parents give him a stuffed bear and one night he wishes that it would come to life. Well the movie would have ended right there if the bear didn’t start jabbering, so abra cadabra, we had a breathing and talking little teddy bear on the big screen.
Fast forward to current day, and the little boy has grown up (physically and chronologically) but is still the little kid at heart. The bear by now has taken on the voice of Seth MacFarlane (from “The Family Guy,”) and MacFarlane brings the same humor (dirty and otherwise) to the big screen.
Along the way our little hairy cub drinks like a fish, smokes dope like Cheech and Chong, and cusses like a rapper. In short, a man (I mean bear) of my heart. I loved this character, and I loved how the actors blended in perfectly, performing probably to a blank screen and then the bear was somehow added.
Mark Wahlberg plays the grown up version of the little boy, and Wahlberg is great as usual. He sure has come a long way from his Markey Mark rap and jean ads days. He is a money-making machine and pretty much whatever he does on screen turns out to be gold.
It didn’t hurt to have Mila Kunis as his love interest, as she gets prettier and prettier with each passing movie. I never paid her much attention when she was on “That 70’s show” on TV, but starting with “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” Kunis has really blossomed into a beauty on the big screen.
Some of the filthy jokes in this movie had me almost crying with laughter, and if you like sexual jokes you wont be disappointed. A few jokes aimed at various ethnic groups might leave you a bit uncomfortable, but over all I laughed by ass off.
But it isn’t just the humor that makes this a good movie. It has sentimentality and a good story line behind it.
It also has cameos from Nora Jones and Ryan Reynolds that come up out of nowhere, and a funny acting part from Giovanni Ribisi who is always good.
And since the movie was filmed in Boston you had the feeling at some point that Fenway Park would sneak in there eventually and sure enough it did for the movie’s climatic end.
Funny how the two venerable old ball parks (Fenway and Wrigley Field) have had so many movies filmed there. That’s one way for the Ricketts family to keep that cash register busy.
This movie was fun from start to finish and I already can’t way for the sequel which is sure to follow.
My rating – a home run – three and a half stars for “Ted”
