A Missed Opportunity

Rating: 4/10 (7 July 2012)

TED had the potential to be a classic movie like BIG or like ELF, both of which were magical tales about childhood dreams set in the adult world. Unfortunately, TED cops out and goes for the cheap shots with jokes about prostitutes pooping on the floor or a teddy bear squirting hand cream all over its face to suggest to a woman what he wants to do to her (she goes out with him anyway). What made BIG and ELF so funny was how innocent the main characters were in the adult world. But TED is a perverted sociopath. And why? That part is never explained. The plot jumps straight from the bear announcing its presence to the child to the bear smoking pot from a bong on a couch. Are we suppose to love him? How can we, when he's a raging racist, homophobe? Something else that made BIG and ELF funny is how the rest of the world responded to the main characters. Here we are to believe the world just accepts the idea of a talking teddy bear and nobody acts surprised. We are to believe everyone in the world saw the Tonight Show thirty years ago and that makes it all acceptable. Why the writers of this dud chose to do it this way is a mystery. It would have been so much funnier if people actually reacted the way people would actually react to a talking teddy bear. Unlike BIG or ELF, films that live on and can be watched again and again, TED will have its flash in the pan and then it will just fade away. Because it makes no sense. At least in BAD SANTA we understood why this particular SANTA was so perverted. Here we are to believe that sitting around smoking pot and watching FLASH GORDON turns you into a lunatic rapist. Not funny.