Ted

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Year:	2012
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Seth MacFarlane
Genre:	Adult fantasy
Starring:	Mark Wahlberg, Seth MacFarlane, Mila Kunis
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637725/
Tagline:	No tagline
Favourite line:	"It's called 'Mind Rape', it's actually pretty mellow."

Family Guy creator, Seth Macfarlane, here eschews the animated world of Quahog for some mainly live action antics.

The plot:
John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) was a lonely child.
Never fitting in with his peers, even the local Jewish kid who always got beat up looked down at him. Lying in bed one night, John wishes that his Christmas present bear could actually com to life and, as he does so, a shooting star passes over head.
Next morning, wouldn’t you know it, the bloody bear has only become sentient.
Skip forward twenty seven years, and John and Ted are still best buddies but now John’s girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) thinks it’s time for him to grow up, to move on from his youth and kick the bear out.
Still bonded to the bear, but loving his girlfriend as well, John must make his decision: the girl, or the stuffed toy.

Sounds so trite, Walt Disney himself would have found it hard to stomach, doesn’t it?
But don’t let that fool you.
For those familiar with Family Guy, you’ll already be aware that MacFarlane seems to view the world through the eyes of a child, but a child that has smoked far too much weed, thinks about sex constantly, laughs at disabled people, pokes fun at race and religion, and likes to curse inappropriately whenever possible.
Retaining the anarchic sense of misadventure from the TV show he is known for, MacFarlane has created a genuinely memorable character in Ted, a hard drinking, womanising, drug snorting, sweary motherfucker whose cynical outlook is matched only by his clear adoration for his best friend.
Laugh out loud funny throughout, it does suffer slightly from CMS - Comedy Movie Syndrome – in that it feels as if this were a double length episode idea, stretched over the extra half hour run time needed to make a full feature.
Occasionally mawkish – but only very briefly – the cast all deliver the goods, and Kunis and Wahlberg make for a genuinely plausible couple, though Kunis’ character Lori is quite unsympathetic at times – why should he not see his mate, you miserable fucker?
Stand out performance, of course, is MacFarlane, as the voice of Ted. Pitched somewhere between Peter and Brian Griffin, it does waver, but for Family Guy fans that’s just fine; the show is known for the fact that most of the voices sound strangely similar, after all.
Not an outright success then but, given that most American comedy movies are absolutely fucking abject – yes, I’m looking right at you Ferrell, right at you Sandler - this at least makes good on its remit, and actually makes you laugh all the way through.
Decent enough.