A comedy with inconsistent hit and misses

Rating: 5/10 (1 February 2015)

Rating-5/10
Ted is an animated bear who starts off being cute and cuddly and ends up being a party mad, foul mouthed well, still a cuddly bear. Ted has it's funny moments and laughter can be had throughout but I just couldn't see this as that THAT funny and some humour is wasted and lazy. It's not badly written or directed just not good enough in the end and you can feel this a comedy, not on par with others or things Seth MacFarlane has done before.
There are parts that can be enjoyed and very much so and the movies fascination with Flash Gordon is fairly funny and provides some great cutaways to the characters pasts. Mark Wahlberg I felt was likable in his role as John Bennett and acts fairly well for a comedy, his serious side and his funny side mix well and he ends up probably the best out of the various performers. I enjoyed the performances involved and no one acts poor really at all and one person who stands out is Giovanni Ribisi who should have been seen more because of his wildly funny interests which form a very funny moment of the movie.
With this kind of comedy you really have to like Seth MacFarlane's brand of funny and it doesn't harm watching a little of his shows before hand. It does feel in parts like an episode of Family Guy was used to create this but even if it was, it has it's moments of laughter. Look I think MacFarlane can be a top comedian but with projects like Ted, it just isn't sharp enough and almost crosses the line in terms of over the top dramatic scenes.
Despite what I say there are moments to be had where laughter can flow and I particularly liked a certain cameo involved where many things are smashed. I wasn't so keen actually on Ted the bear and felt characters such as John's boss and various others were actually the best thing about this, with MacFarlane's writing skill coming in to play and making something work.
I have to say with this that some jokes made can be offensive and although I think comedy can touch anything, there are times when the offending doesn't quite make sense and although as well we can see MacFarlane is playing a joke here, I couldn't help feel gay jokes and misogyny were either unneeded or miss timed completely. In fact on that point if you are easily offended then don't watch it, it's a not a good enough excuse to say it offends you if you yourself watched it knowing it may offend.
Overall I felt it deserved a grade of 5/10 and a strong and high one of that, in word terms it felt pretty average but again, a strong kind of average and not far at all from being an OK movie. This is a piece where 15 year olds are expected to laugh and elders expected to find it immature but watching it and thinking back on it, it has it's moments and with a type of humour that is hard to sometimes laugh at, it seems to at least do it partly well. At the time of writing this Ted 2 is in the works and although I wouldn't and won't expect anything of it, with bits of MacFarlane's skill and many a slight tinkering in the script department it could be very funny so I will be interested to see just how that goes down.