Wednesday 8 August 2012

Movie review - Ted

As a fan of both Family Guy and American Dad, I was pleased to hear a while back that Seth MacFarlane was making his first film.  To be honest, I've found Seth to be a bit of an over confident egomaniac, but you cant argue with the facts: he is a writer, actor, animator, director, producer and even singer, having appeared at the BBC Proms! This guy is talented, but could he take his brand of humour (and sometimes it's waaaaay over the line) on to the big screen? 
 
The hype around a film like Ted often means that the movie experience is a disappointment, but last night Pete and I made a rare visit to the cinema to see the coarse, sarcastic and loveable bear. The cinema was very busy, mainly with guys - no surprise there.
 
Mark Kermode on BBC Five Live says that, to be a successful comedy you should have laughed out loud at least 5 times. Ted exceeded this quota easily.
 
There are no spoilers here; the story is obvious and silly, but who cares?!  It made me smile for an hour and three quarters, despite a couple of romantic lulls in the film. Mark 'Marky Mark with the muscles' Wahlberg is great at comedy and plays a bit of a loser who is led astray by his friend Ted. And the bear himself is some impressive CGI and really just Peter Griffin in fur.
 
I appreciate that this film wont appeal to everyone and the storyline does run out of steam, but sometimes you need to laugh for a while. I don't want to give anything away, so I will just say that Patrick Stewart's narration, lots of film references and some brilliant one-liners make the film and I look forward to seeing it again, just to find out what else I missed.
  

5 comments:

  1. I was ambivalent about seeing this film, not least because of past (homophobic?) remarks of the one-time Marky Mark - or maybe I'm wrong about that. (But something there still sits uneasily in my memory). Anyway, as next week this film not only shows at my regular 'art-house' cinema, but also that it now also gets your own 'thumbs up', I just gotta go!

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  2. Keep in mind that you REALLY have to like Family Guy to like this film. It's as far removed from Arthouse as you could ever get!

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    1. Yes, from what I know about it it's so far removed from usual 'art-house' fayre that I wondered if the cinema were advertising the right film - but it's right there on their brochure. Makes me even more intrigued. I reckon I'll still go (even though I've never seen the TV show. Is there a connection?) - so it should appear on my blog early-ish next week after the Olympics have gone (sigh!)

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  3. Hmmm... I do like Family Guy (or at least have done when I've seen it) but this just doesn't appeal at all... Ho-hum, each to their own, I guess!

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  4. I loved Ted but I would approach this with a heap load of caution if you haven't seen Family Guy!

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