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.