Live action Family Guy

Rating: 6/10 (29 September 2015)

"Ted" is an American 105-minute movie from 3 years ago and it was successful enough to make a sequel very recently. The writer, director and voice actor for the title character is Seth MacFarlane, the creative mind behind the long-running television series "Family Guy". And I felt the humour in this film here resembled the one from MacFarlane's trademark television show a lot. "Ted" includes an uncountable number of funny one-liners from start to finish that successfully distract from the actually pretty dramatic story involving a longtime relationship possibly ending and a kidnapping plot by some psychopaths that almost results in murder.
This movie brought MacFarlane also an Academy Award nomination for a song by Norah Jones the very same year that MacFarlane hosted the Oscars. But back to the story. A young boy makes a wish that his teddy bear would come to life and that exactly happens in a night full of thunder, not full of shooting stars. The result is the expected. Early on, the teddy bear is harmless and lovely, but 25 years later, he has become a weed-smoking television addicted punk. However, his friendship to Mark Wahlberg's character John is as strong as ever. Sadly, it gets in the way of John's ambitions in life and relationship to Lori (played by Mila Kunis). In order for the trio to sort things out, it is necessary that Ted gets abducted by a complete lunatic, played by Giovanni Ribisi, and his sadistic son.
As I said earlier, there is actually quite some drama in this movie, but all in all, it's still more of a comedy. Quick shoutout to the hilarious Norah Jones cameo. Love her as a singer and she shows some decent comedic talent in here as well. All in all, there are a couple weak moments and even some plot developments that don't make too much sense, like Ted beating the crap out of the pretty buff John on one occasion, but not defending himself against the fat boy and his father when they are coming for him. Still, the positive outweighs the negative and in terms of realism, we should not forget that this is a story about a talking teddy bear. So it's all very absurd and lack of realism shouldn't be a problem. However, if you imagine the teddy bear being a man in his 30s, this could actually have been the exact same film. No surprise Ted only sleeps with female humans. He is pretty much a human himself apart from his physics. Good movie and I recommend it. I will probably give the sequel a go as well at some point.