Ted 2 Movie Review: Family Guy on the Big Screen

Ted 2 is funny. I laughed out loud multiple times, and it has memorable quotable lines. I can’t ask for much more out of a comedy. It doesn’t quite match the magic of the first movie, but it comes extremely close. If you like Seth McFarlane comedy then you should enjoy Ted 2. If you don’t like Family Guy or the original Ted, not sure why you would think about going to see this, but if you did you wouldn’t like it.  

It is a simple premise, Ted wants to have a baby with his new wife, so they try to adopt. He gets on the governments radar and is declared property and not a person. Ted must fight for his rights and sues the state of Massachusetts. It’s not that interesting of a story, but it’s a least a plot line you can follow. It provides McFarlane the device to ply the audience with random references and funny asides. Where the movie succeeds is the interaction between Ted and John (Mark Wahlberg). It’s funny to think a talking bear and an actor can have great on screen chemistry, but they do.  I don’t think I laughed at a scene without the two of them in it.  I’m not sure why a movie with a foul mouthed teddy bear is believable, but it is and Mark Wahlberg sells it.

Many of the negative things I have read about the movie is Mila Kunis isn’t in the movie, and the first movie was now pointless. Do we now really need the first movie to mean something? They explained why she isn’t in the movie, and I thought it worked well with the framework overall. Without ditching Kunis we don’t get the love interest in the form of Samantha played by Amanda Seyfried. I think her character brought more to the movie than Kunis did. She joined in on the hilarity of the Ted and John and made the duo a trio. She became a part of the gang, instead of trying to change John into something he wasn’t.

The ending storyline is almost identical to the first movie, as far as the Ted kidnapped aspect. Adding to the cliché that all comedy sequels rehash the same plot as the original. I didn’t mind it in this one though. In fact I thought this story arc was better than the first Ted. In the first movie this storyline felt tacked on and wasn’t needed. This time it was more integrated into the movie and made more sense. Again not that the plot of the movie is what we went to see. We got to see a McFarlane make us laugh and that’s exactly what the movie did.

I loved the scenes at New York comic con. Slight Spoiler, Patrick Warburton is in cosplay as The Tick, and it is spectacular. There are a few other cameos, which I enjoyed, and they didn’t feel that forced, they are just random aspects of the movie.

Short review, but there isn’t much to the movie. If you liked Ted you will like Ted 2. It’s not quite as good as the first, but it is a worthy sequel.

My Rating: In-between Rentable and Must see in Theaters/Will stop and watch every time on TV