When John Bennett (Mark Walhberg) was a small, lonely child he wished for just one thing—a best friend. His wish came true and Ted (voice of Seth MacFarlane), his trusty teddy bear, came to life. The pair became “Thunder Buddies” for life and the subject of two movies, Ted and this weekend’s Ted 2.
Ted isn’t your usual teddy bear. He smokes pot, swears—imagine rooming with Tommy Chong and Charles Bukowski—and has trouble holding down a job.
In the new film Ted is married to a human woman but under the eyes of the law he is seen as property and not a person. When the couple decide to adopt a child he faces a court battle helmed by a young lawyer (Amanda Seyfried) and a renowned, civil-rights attorney (Morgan Freeman).
Ted may be the rudest and crudest teddy bear to ever star in a movie, but there are loads of other talking teddies that are cool bears and not Teddy Bores. Remember Lancelot from Labyrinth, or the bear in AI: Artificial Intelligence who tells the young robot that 50 years is not such a long time and Winnie the Pooh? Here are three more cinematic bear necessities:
“I’ll never be like other people, but that’s alright,” says the star of the delightful Paddington, based on the much-loved children’s books by Michael Bond, “because I’m a bear. A bear called Paddington.”
The story of Paddington (voiced by Ben Whishaw) the cuddly, orphaned Peruvian bear picks up when he, armed only with a “worrying marmalade problem” and his distinctive red hat, lands at Paddington Station in London. There, a family adopts him and learns to love the little bear, even though chaos follows his every step. The film’s co-star Hugh Bonneville says the Paddington character is so popular he is, “part of the DNA of the UK.”
The movie presents Paddington in his iconic blue duffel coat and red hat but not the usual Wellington Boots because they were not part of the bear’s original design. Manufacturers added his red Welly’s so the toy teddies were able to stand upright.
As voiced by Ned Beatty, Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear is a Southern accented, strawberry scented teddy who looks cuddly, but is anything but. When a misunderstanding threatens to separate the toys, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen), Jesse (Joan Cusack) and the gang take matters into their own tiny hands but when they meet the huggable but evil Lotso the garbage dump or the attic begin to look good.
“The guy may seem plush and huggable on the outside,” says Buttercup the Unicorn, “but inside he’s a monster.” His habit of throwing toys that don’t please him into “the box” is so evil he’s even been compared to the wicked Governor on The Walking Dead.
Unlike Ted Fozzie the Bear doesn’t work blue. The fuzzy brown jokester has been a big screen star since 1979’s The Muppet Movie where he was discovered by Kermit the Frog doing stand-up comedy in a dive bar. In the film Fozzie drives a Studebaker, but how, exactly, does a puppet manoeuvre a car? The film answers the question—“Where did you learn to drive?” Kermit asks. “I took a correspondence course!”—but the real answer is that the real driver hid in the trunk and drove the car by remote control, using a television monitor to guide his steering.
In the first five minutes of “Ted 2,” Seth Macfarlane’s sequel to the 2012 stoner-potty-mouth-teddy-bear movie starring Mark Wahlberg, there’s a wedding between a stuffed bear and a human, drug use, Flash Gordon, bear porn and a dance number.
Then it gets weird.
To understand how weird it gets, you have to know the history. When John Bennett (Wahlberg) was a small, lonely child he wished for just one thing—a best friend. His wish came true and Ted (voice of MacFarlane), his trusty teddy bear, came to life. The pair became “Thunder Buddies” for life and room and soul mates. Ted isn’t your usual teddy bear. He smokes pot, swears—imagine bunking with Tommy Chong and Charles Bukowski and you get the idea.—and likes to drive and text at the same time.
In the new film Ted is married to Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth) but when the couple decide to adopt a child it’s discovered that in the eyes of the law Ted is considered property and not a person. John and Ted hatch a plan to fight for the bear’s civil rights in court. “We’ll take it all the way to Judge Judy if we have to,” says John. The only lawyer they can afford is a young attorney on her first case, Samantha L. Jackson (Amanda Seyfried) who shares the guy’s affection for pot (she smokes a strain called Help Me Get Home) and agrees to work pro bono.
Add to that court cases, a wild kidnapping plot, a renowned, civil-rights attorney (Morgan Freeman) and a nutty battle at Comic Con.
Ted journey to personhood begins with as laugh a minute. Maybe even every thirty seconds. Full belly laughs, that go well beyond politically correct to a land where very few comedians fear to tread. There are jokes about race, sexuality, the Kardashians, mental illness and a whole host of “That’s too soon” gags. You will laugh even though you’ll feel bad about some of the things you are laughing at. MacFarlane and his “Family Guy” co-writers (Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild) have hit a sweet spot whereby they can use animation and cute teddy bears to push the envelope in very extreme ways. This is not a movie for the easily offended.
Then comes the court case and the movie shifts. The jokes thin out and the subtext about the civil rights of any oppressed people comes front and center. Or at least threatens to for a moment. There are definitely some serious matters afloat here and MacFarlane allows the absurdity of the situation to take a backseat to the issue of basic rights for all people—even if they are bears.
The jokes still come hard and fast, but fewer of them land in the second hour. Perhaps two hours is too long for dirty-mouth stoner bear jokes, or maybe it’s that Wahlberg has less to do here than he did in number one, or that Mila Kunis, so charming in “Ted” is gone, replaced by Seyfried. Seyfried is fine, BTW, and can deliver a joke but Kunis’s relationship with John in the first film provided much of that film’s heart, something part two could use a bit more of.
“Ted 2” has more very funny, very off colour jokes than most movies. Too bad they’re concentrated in the first hour and not spread throughout.
The generation gap that lies at the heart of “While We’re Young,” the latest film from “Squid and the Whale” director Noah Baumbach, can be summed up in one short but clever scene.
Twenty-something hipster Jamie (Adam Driver) offers up a pair of headphones to Josh (Ben Stiller), a forty-five-year-old documentary filmmaker. As “Eye of the Tiger” blares on the soundtrack Josh says, “I remember when this song was just supposed to be bad.”
Josh and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) are a childless married couple living in Manhattan. They’re comfortably easing into middle age when they meet Jamie and Darby (Amanda Seyfried), an impossibly hip married couple who live in a Harlem loft stuffed with vinyl records, manual typewriters and good vibes.
The young’uns lead an intoxicating life, connected to every neo-New York trend. They eat at artisanal restaurants, raid thrift shops for clothes and partake in ayahuasca ceremonies (which leads to one of my favourite lines: “Maybe don’t flirt with the shaman.”). While Josh and Cornelia bash away on the latest smart phones, Jamie and Darby have embraced the retro chic of VHS. They’re so cool they don’t even use Google. When Josh pulls out his phone to search for a word they’ve all blanked on, Jamie and Darby demur. “Let’s just not know,” Jamie says.
The relationship between the two couples is one of mutual mentorship. Josh and Cornelia go to hip hop classes and bourbon tastings, feeling young again alongside their new found friends while Jamie and Darby look to the older couple for help with a film Jamie is trying to make.
The dramatic conflict comes late in the movie when it becomes clear that Jamie isn’t as easy going as everyone first thought.
It’s a bit too easy to compare writer/director Baumbach to Woody Allen, but it’s apt. Both are New York filmmakers to the core and both, at their best, comment on life in the microcosm of that city’s life. Their stories are both specific and universal, micro and macro, and hone in on the behaviour that makes us human, for better and for worse.
In “While We’re Young” Baumbach inhabits Allen’s turf, making a comedy for adults that by turns skewers and embraces the very people he’s making the movie for. It’s a grown up look at growing up. Intelligent and funny, it highlights the insecurities attached to middle age, while celebrating the wisdom and sense of purpose that can only come with experience.
Bambauch is generous with his characters–Jamie and Darby aren’t caricatures of trendoid NYC dolts but nicely etched portraits of Generation Y kids struggling to find a place in the world—and is aided by terrific performances. Nobody does pent up anxiety like Stiller and for Driver this is the next step up the ladder to huge mainstream success. Watts and Seyfried aren’t given as much to do, although they have some of the film’s best lines. “If I stay here any longer I’ll Girl, Interrupt,” says Darby with mock seriousness. Charles Grodin has a small but important part as a legendary documentarian—think vérité hero D. A. Pennebaker—whose caustic charm and way with a line—”You just showed me a six-and-a-half hour long film that felt seven hours too long.”—is worth the price of admission alone.
“While We’re Young” is a terrific film with razor sharp insights to the differences and similarities between Gen X and Y.
I was hoping to be more offended by “A Million Ways to Die in the West.”
Each week on his show Family Guy, Seth McFarlane manages at least one joke that makes me cringe. It is as edgy a television show as there is on network television and many times I have muttered, “That’s not right,” under my breath even as I am laughing.
I expected McFarlane to push the envelope even further for the big screen as writer, director and star of the “Blazing Saddles-esque” “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” and for sure there are some wild and crazy gags—some may literally make you gag—but it feels safe. Like Judd Apatow, not McFarlane.
Set in Arizona’s wild west, McFarlane is Albert, a mild mannered sheep farmer who hates the frontier. “It’s a disgusting dirty place,” he says, “a cesspool of despair.” The despair of his day-to-day life is compounded when his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) dumps him and takes up with a wealthy owner of a moustache grooming shop (Neil Patrick Harris). He finds love again with a mysterious stranger Anna (Charlize Theron), who helps him cope with dangerous frontier life and grow a backbone. His newfound courage is tested when Anna’s husband, outlaw Clinch (Liam Neeson) rides into town.
Despite the similarities to “Blazing Saddles,” “A Million Ways to Die in the West” doesn’t have the satiric subtext that made Mel Brooks’ movie great. McFarlane takes stabs at racism and the social morays of 1880s—only he could create a prostitute character (Sarah Silverman) who loves her work but is saving herself for marriage—but here he comes off as Brooks Lite.
As the star he is funny by times, but his part is basically one joke. He’s the fish-out-of-water who speaks like a twenty first century smart aleck. For instance, as people around him are killed in increasingly wild ways—hence the movie’s title—he observes, “We should all just wear coffins for clothes.” It’s a good line, but his overall performance is more Bob Hope (with more than a hint of Peter Griffin in his voice) than John Wayne.
“A Million Ways to Die In the West” relies on anachronisms and shock value jokes to raise a smile, and spends too much time on the love story. Brooks went for the jugular, and forty years on it’s still funny and edgy. McFarlane’s movie does have at least one classic moment that will appeal to Generation Xers and the most undignified duel ever, but it doesn’t have much sardonic resonance.
SYNOPSIS: Set in Arizona’s wild west, McFarlane is Albert, a mild mannered sheep farmer who hates the frontier. “It’s a disgusting dirty place,” he says, “a cesspool of despair.” The despair of his day-to-day life is compounded when his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) dumps him and takes up with a wealthy owner of a moustache grooming shop (Neil Patrick Harris). He finds love again with a mysterious stranger Anna (Charlize Theron), who helps him cope with dangerous frontier life and grow a backbone. His newfound courage is tested when Anna’s husband, outlaw Clinch (Liam Neeson) rides into town.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 3 Stars
Steve: 2 Stars
Richard: Steve, I laughed at A Million Ways to Die in the West, but strangely enough, I was hoping to be more offended by it. Each week on his show Family Guy, Seth McFarlane manages at least one joke that makes me cringe. I expected him to push the envelope even further for the big screen. Sure there are some wild and crazy jokes here, but they’re at the level of Judd Apatow, not McFarlane. Was it outrageous enough for you?
Steve: It is outrageous but the brazenness in McFarlane’s big-screen sophomore effort is buried beneath more juvenile gags involving bodily gases than the off-kilter comedy his show or Ted succeeds with. Perhaps by covering off all areas of writing, directing and then hiring himself as the lead, McFarland suffers from an inability to self-edit. Speaking of, what do you think of McFarlane as leading man?
RC: I do find him funny, but I can’t help but hear Peter Griffin in his voice and I find that distracting. His part is basically one joke. He’s the fish out of water who speaks like a twenty first century smart aleck. For instance, as people around him are killed in increasingly wild ways—hence the movie’s title—he observes, “We should all just wear coffins for clothes.” It’s a good line, but his overall performance is more Bob Hope than John Wayne.
SG: It’s true but, in this, McFarlane seems to think his gags are more brilliant than they actually are – as if audiences haven’t seen an explosive diarrhea gag before. That said, when he pushes social mores, he goes for the jugular focusing most notably on historical racism. It comes off for some uneven narrative. It’s a good thing he surrounds himself with a solid supporting cast.
RC: Comparisons to Blazing Saddles are inevitable. Both movies have social commentary mixed with cringe worthy gags—some may literally make you gag—but A Million Ways to Die in the West doesn’t have the satiric subtext that made Mel Brooks’ movie great. McFarlane relies on anachronisms and shock value jokes to raise a smile, and spends too much time on the love story. Brooks went for the jugular, and forty years on it’s still funny and edgy. A Million Ways to Die does have at least one classic moment that will appeal to everyone over age 30 and the most undignified duel ever, but it doesn’t have much resonance.
SG: It doesn’t have much heart either. Although Charlize Theron does a stalwart job playing the romantic interest against McFarlane’s spineless pessimist, the filmmaker’s ceaseless determination for punchlines only undermines the film’s attempt at circling back to an earnest love story. In that respect, it lies as lifeless as the film’s many, many corpses. And that includes the western town’s unnoticed, three-day dead mayor.
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
