Ted (4/5 Stars)

People let me tell you about my best friend....

Comedy is like magic. There’s an explanation but you don’t need to know it to enjoy it. You may even enjoy it more not knowing it. I’m trying to give Seth MacFarlane, the writer/director of “Ted,” a serious compliment. The movie, “Ted,” looks and feels so simplistically drawn that one may mistake the whole thing for being an easy thing to accomplish. But there is plenty of good material, much it is rather edgy (R rated Teddy Bear style sex, drugs, racial humor, and violence), and it is a comedic accomplishment that the movie comes off as a simple, funny, and ultimately harmless movie. 

It starts with the Christmas wish of a small Bostonian boy named John. He doesn’t have any friends so he wishes his stuffed Teddy Bear would come to life and be his best friend forever and ever. And the Teddy Bear does and wants nothing but to be his friend forever and ever. The concept of a Teddy Bear stuns the nation and Ted becomes a minor celebrity. But as explains the kindly narrator of the story, “No matter how big a splash you make in this world whether you’re Corey Feldman, Frankie Muniz, Justin Bieber, or a talking teddy bear, eventually, nobody gives a shit.” 27 years later, Ted is still alive and still living with the now 35-year-old John, played by Mark Wahlberg. They are still the best of friends but Ted is no longer an innocent child’s plaything. He lives on the couch, smokes pot, and brings home hookers. This is why Lori, John’s girlfriend for 4 years, played by Mila Kunis, presents an ultimatum: The Teddy Bear from your childhood or the woman you met as an adult. 

This is Seth MacFarlane’s first feature film. You may know him a lot better from the TV show “Family Guy.”  Living proof of that is the voice of Ted, a perfect copy of the Family Guy himself, Peter Griffin (both are voiced by MacFarlane.) This is a masterstroke as that voice, with the very very strong Beantown accent, is one of the funniest voices I have ever heard. There is an inherent vibe of glee inhabiting every syllable that makes me smile every time I hear it.

Even better is what isn’t taken from Family Guy and that is the avant-garde style of crappy humor that makes it an inferior sitcom (I stopped watching halfway into Season 3). Family Guy had this repeated obsession with this thing I will deem, “the absence of a joke-joke,” where characters would setup a situation and then blankly stare at each other, the joke apparently being that this is where a punch-line should be but there isn’t a punch-line and isn’t that funny? Well, perhaps the first time it was. Then you start wondering if the blank stares are simply there because the writers couldn’t think of anything funny to say. Anyway the good news is that this does not happen in “Ted.” There are real jokes here and the movie is filled wall to wall with them.

One especially great thing the movie does is present situations that should feel awkward but somehow stay comfortable the entire time. A good example of that is how the movie presents Laurie’s employer, played by Joel McHale, who hits on her everyday at work. These scenes should be awkward but aren’t and I think it’s mostly because of the blunt kind of whatever way Joel McHale brings it up, the way he doesn’t particularly care when being rejected, and the way it doesn’t touch upon anything truly creepy like leering stares, demeaning remarks, promises of material rewards, or threats concerning Laurie’s status at work. Then once Laurie and John temporarily separate because of something really funny involving Flash Gordon in a previous scene, the boss asks her out again to a Norah Jones concert. The way he phrases the reasons why she should say yes to this should be framed and put on somebody’s wall because I was like nodding along and going, ‘okay, fuck it. I would go to the concert too.’

That brings up what happens at the concert itself, which in most other movies would be awkward, but here became the funniest scene I have seen in a movie all year. John gets backstage at the Norah Jones concert, due to Ted’s past romantic liaison with the singer, and gets permission to go on stage and sing a song to his ex-girlfriend in the crowd. Impromptu love songs in public places are ripe territory for stomach-churning embarrassing moments. But here because of the way it’s done, it couldn’t have been more enjoyable. For one thing, Norah Jones is totally cool with it and even puts on sunglasses and plays along with a saxophone. Second, the song being sung is the theme song to “Octopussy” which is not a love song and actually not even about sex. It just happens to be the theme song of the TV show they watched the first night they met. Third, and most important, is that the reactions shots of Laurie don’t show somebody who is embarrassed and to top everything off, when they get to Joel McHale’s reaction, he smirks and says “Holy Shit” as if he is about to witness the greatest thing in the world.  The result is this sense of safety because even if it goes terribly, the outcome won’t be awkward because none of the characters will feel terrible if it does. In the meantime enjoy Mark Wahlberg singing “Octopussy,” really really poorly and all the people in the crowd getting really really angry.

For the record, quite a lot of the jokes in “Ted” contain pop culture references to really old TV shows like Flash Gordon and Octopussy. You don’t need to know anything about these shows to find the jokes funny. Case in point, I’ve never seen any of these shows and found all of the jokes funny. Use your comedic intuition and you’ll be just fine filling in the holes.

Let’s talk about acting and what makes it “good.” Here, Mark Wahlberg is playing a 35 -year -old schlub working at a rental car agency whose best friend is a talking teddy bear. Cut all the prejudicial crap you may have that states only actors playing biographical men with incurable diseases or physical handicaps deserve to win awards. Now judge this performance on its terms. Ask questions like, was it as funny as it could have been? As a lead character, did Mark empower the supporting actors to be as funny as they could have been? And perhaps the best question of all: Was the talking teddy bear believable? The last question is the linchpin here, because if Mark had done his job poorly, it would be really obvious that he was actually acting against an invisible spot on the floor. Ted, a product of James Cameron-ish special effects, was added entirely in post-production. This includes all the scenes where the two get in fights. During shooting, Mark was pretending to fight with someone who wasn’t physically there, not exactly an easy thing to do. This type of performance always gets overlooked because the better it is done the less people notice it. But it is there and deserves recognition. Billy Murray will probably get the Oscar for portraying Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a biographical President of the USA who is paralyzed with polio, this year. I don’t even have to see that movie in order to predict he will get nominated for it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate actors that can pull off playing opposite to a CGI teddy bear an entire movie. I submit that takes just as much skill if not more. This is one of the best performances of the year.

One other thing that is noticeable in not this comedy but too many others. None of the women are funny. This is not simply just a problem in writing, but also in casting. All of the women here are supermodels, even the coworker that works at the rental car agency. I don’t particularly care about the realism of that, it’s just that if you hired an actual comedian, they probably could have done more with the part. I sort of got the sense here that MacFarlane’s imagination is limited in that respect and figured that all women are the same in the comedy department so why not just hire the most beautiful ones. Funny women exist! I have witnessed them in movies before. There are a million places I could go to look at incredibly beautiful women and their perpetually bored expressions. I paid money to see “Ted” in order to laugh. Hire funny women. If you don’t know how to write jokes for them, ask them to make something up.

Anyway good job on the first feature, MacFarlane. Now go out there and make another.