The Thunder Buddies are back! Seth MacFarlane once again writes and directs the characters from his 2012 mega hit in the follow up Ted 2. This time around Ted marries his girlfriend Tami-Lynn and the couple wants to have a baby. However, to have custody of a child, Ted must prove to a court of law that he is real person and deserves all the same basic rights as all people. Thus leading us on a comedy ride of epic crudeness.
Mark Wahlberg reprises his role of Ted’s best friend, John Bennett, and Seth MacFarlane continues as the voice of Ted. If anything, these two actors have great chemistry on screen, even if Seth McFarlane is just a CGI bear. They act like real friends and that comes across on screen. It’s a testament to accuracy by having MacFarlane on set with Wahlberg to act out those scenes with him to give him a sense of where to look and direct his performance. Listening to these two characters is always kind of a good time.
In addition to the original cast for the sequel is Amanda Seyfried as Samantha Jackson, the lawyer who is trying to prove Ted is a real person. Her character is rather odd because on the one hand she is completely smart and competent in her role, but on the other it feels like she just wasn’t sure what to do. With Wahlberg and MacFarlane having such a huge presence on screen, she nearly gets swallowed up. She has little to no chemistry with Marky Mark, which is really awkward being that we’re suppose to believe they end up together at the end of the movie. This stems from the fact that Wahlberg is just too old for her. She’s great when she isn’t on screen with him. The filmmakers should have cast an older actress, but it’s Hollywood and apparently there are no actresses over 40, so what are you going to do (sarcasm).
Once Ted is told that he isn’t a real person, the movie kind of falls into a montage that never ends. Endless scenes showing us how John and Sam are trying to help Ted and how life keeps crapping on him. Enter Donny…Giovanni Ribisi’s creepy character from the first film is back to once again kidnap Ted for himself. This time he has a plan to take Ted, find out what makes him special and use that to make more Teds so that every child in the world can have a talking teddy bear, thus making Hasbro a huge market share.
As the movie progresses, we meet a lot of strange characters and cameos: Liam Neeson, Dennis Haysbert, John Slattery, Tom Brady, and even Morgan Freeman, who seems just as out of place in this movie as it does of you reading he’s in this movie. Freeman has about three scenes and he comes in and does what you expect him to do. He’s clearly phoning it in, but even Morgan Freeman’s phoning it in is magic. This role could have been played by anyone; they just had him do it because c’mon…it’s Morgan Freeman!
The oddest cameos in the movie would be of Patrick Warburton and Michael Dorn but they have been doing voiceover for MacFarlane’s animated series’ for years. Here in the movie, because of plot, Ted ends up at the New York Comic Con where Dorn and Warburton dress up like their pop culture counterparts: The Tick for Warburton and Worf for Dorn. Then they both proceed to have several scenes of them beating up nerds. Why? It makes no sense and frankly is kind of insulting. It’s never once funny and also kind of shits on the people who are seeing the movie. Without the comic con audience, MacFarlane wouldn’t be as popular as he is. So maybe don’t dump on your core fan-base.
The special effects in Ted 2 have made many leaps in technology since the first one. The bear effects just look great. You believe Ted is there and interacting with objects and co-stars. The bear looks the best in the opening act of the movie where he pays homage to an old-style Busby Berkeley number with hundreds of dancers and singers. It looks impressive and is by far the most well-shot thing in the whole movie.
If you liked the first one then you’re most likely going to like this. It’s the same type of crude humor you’ve come to expect from MacFarlane. It’s rude, gross, and has way too many F-Bombs, but that’s where we are now for R-rated comedies. Always trying to push the envelope in language and new adjectives instead of the pushing the envelope of thought. But, what you going to do? The movie is very funny and is an appropriate sequel. But that’s about it.